The Vesuvius Isotope (The Katrina Stone Novels) (32 page)

BOOK: The Vesuvius Isotope (The Katrina Stone Novels)
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“Your ticket is good for three tombs,” my guide said, and she motioned to a man at the entrance, who brought her a packet of postcards. “You can’t take pictures inside,” she explained, “but you can buy these if you want.” She began flipping through them to demonstrate to us what to look for inside the tombs. As she began pointing out the various gods and goddesses on the walls, I cocked my head when she pointed to an image of the goddess Isis.

“Whose tomb is that?” I asked.

 

I carefully scanned the reliefs within Merneptah’s tomb, dumbfounded.

These tombs were each built and decorated during the reign of the pharaoh
, I recollected from the tour guide’s monologue.
In most cases, that was only a matter of a few years
.

I recalled an international episode that had taken place almost fifteen years prior. A mine had collapsed in Chile, trapping thirty-three miners. It took months to extract them through the rock, and the survival of all thirty-three men was considered nothing short of miraculous. A brand new rock drill was pioneered in the rescue effort, and a variety of space technologies designed by NASA were incorporated in the process—both to keep the miners alive and to subsequently bring them to the surface.

These tombs were built through labor alone, more than a thousand years before the birth of Christ. The effort that must have gone into burrowing into this rock was scarcely fathomable to my modern mind.

And then there was the art work. Every square inch of the tomb was not only painted, it was engraved and then painted. And that was just the surviving art after three thousand years. I tried to imagine how these walls had looked during the time of the pharaohs. I tried to imagine modern technology, modern artists, modern methods creating the reliefs before me. I could not do it.

The image of Isis drew me into the tomb.

 

I would learn that day that the goddess Isis was everywhere in ancient Egypt. She graced the walls of nearly every temple, every tomb, every shrine. She was easy to recognize because she always looked the same. I desperately wanted to understand
why
—because the patron goddess of Cleopatra, the Egyptian goddess of medicine, never looked anything like I had expected. And this discrepancy was frustrating my search for the medicine that could save my daughter.

 

She came to me again in the Valley of the Queens. She presided over the tomb of Nefertari. The same Isis, so different than the one I had imagined.

Alyssa, I wish you were here to explain this
, I thought, and then I remembered what I needed to do before her arrival—and Dante’s.

 

I stepped out of Nefertari’s tomb, and my attention turned to my modern surroundings rather than the ancient ones. I was shocked at how quickly and easily I formulated a plan for something I never would have thought I could do.

Luxor was vastly different from Cairo. In Cairo, I had seen tourists only in the Egyptian museum. There were none walking the streets except for me. Luxor, in contrast, was like a theme park. Hordes of tourists poured from buses and filtered through tombs like ants through the tunnels of a child’s ant farm.

And, inevitably, with the tourists came the touts. Children and adults alike peddled postcards, small statues, miniature pyramids, T-shirts, and very expensive bottles of water. Men in long galabias and women in headscarves offered maps of the tombs and personal tours. Many of them spoke remarkably good English.

Several pairs of uniformed, armed police stood guard over the tombs but afforded tourists no protection from those seeking to take advantage.

I watched as a pair of dark teenaged boys followed a group of tourists toward a tomb. The taller of the two boys motioned toward a handsome thirty-something man wearing jeans and a polo shirt. The second boy smiled, and I stepped forward to follow from a distance as they approached the man and his young family. As the family stepped into the crowded queue to push forward into a tomb, the tall boy accidentally bumped the man as he passed, offering a shy apology. The shorter boy then stepped away from the crowd with a hand in his pocket. And I knew that the handsome thirty-something man had just lost his wallet.

I had just found my accomplices.

 

The two young pickpockets had resumed their duties selling sheesha pipes when I approached their makeshift booth. An older man and woman, who might have been their parents, were sitting on boxes in a small recess of shade provided by the tables.

I began examining one of their pipes with feigned interest, and the shorter boy materialized before me. “Four fifty,” he said.

“I’m sorry? Four hundred fifty Egyptian pounds?”

The boy shook his head. “American dollar,” he said with a smile that was missing a few teeth, and I laughed.

I set the water pipe back down. “You’ve got to be joking, kid.”

“OK, three hundred. Two fifty! Two fifty!”

“Two fifty Egyptian,” I said, and the boy looked as if he was considering it. Egyptian pounds were worth one fifth the value of American dollars.

“Let me ask you a question,” I said then, and the taller boy approached to involve himself in our conversation. “How long does it generally take you to make five thousand Egyptian pounds?”

The tall boy frowned. “This is tourist time,” he said. “Uh,
sayf
… summer. We make a lot of money in summer.”

“Still,” I said. “Five thousand. How long?” It was the equivalent of one thousand American dollars. A lot of money by any standards, but possibly more money than these children would possess in their entire lifetimes.

The boys did not answer. I glanced at the older couple still sitting nearby and lowered my voice. “I have five thousand Egyptian pounds for you here,” I said, and to prove my sincerity I held out the money for them, letting them touch it, letting them imagine how it would feel in their hands. “But I need you to do something for me. And you will do it because, if you don’t, I will put an end to your
real
business.” Without warning, I snaked a hand forward and yanked the stolen wallet from the shorter boy’s pocket.

 

A few moments later, the two boys disappeared inside the crowded tomb of Queen Nefertari, easily the most popular tomb in the Valley of the Queens. Within a few moments of that, a commotion arose that led a few tourists, mostly with young children, to rush out of the tomb. But considerably larger numbers forced their way inside.

As if on cue, one of the uniformed policemen stood upright and stepped away from the tall jutting rock he had been leaning against. He motioned toward his partner and then toward the tomb. The partner approached it, turned and waved at his superior, and then stepped inside.

Within minutes, the shorter of the Egyptian teenagers emerged. He walked nonchalantly over to his sheesha stand, which I had since vacated. I waited for a few moments and then wandered over toward a smaller, less populated tomb. I stared toward the tomb from the outside, and I could feel the boy’s presence as he walked up beside me.

“Did you get it?” I asked without looking at him. I opened my gloved hand just enough for him to see the money within.

Wordlessly, the boy took the money and replaced it in my palm with the heavy, cold metal of the uniformed officer’s pistol.

 

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