Imhotep Page 5

  He closed the journal and turned in his seat to look out the window. The room faced east, so he saw the glow of lights from Cairo and the occasional bouncing lights of a car arriving at the Mena House or heading back to the city. A set of headlights approached from his right, growing larger, then, as they passed they seemed to recede, not toward Cairo, but into the past.

  Susan’s cell phone had rung at the very minute she was parking her car at the TGIF restaurant that night six months ago.

  She had reached for the cell phone while getting out of the car and so forgot to pull the keys from the ignition. As the locked door had swung shut, she had realized what she had done and had said “Shit!” to Addy who had been on the other end of the phone call.

  “I just locked myself out of the car.”

  “Did you ever join Triple-A?” Addy had asked; knowing the answer her best friend would give.

  “God, you can be such a M-O-M,” Susan had said and Addy had laughed. Tim had heard that laugh as he sat with Addy in their apartment.

  “What happened?” he had asked.

  “Susan locked herself out of the car. Can you believe it? She hasn’t done that for more than a week,” Addy had told him, careful not to cover the mouthpiece so Susan could hear her.

  “It’s your fault,” Susan had told Addy. “You called right when I was getting out of the car.”

  “Oh, my,” Addy had apologized. “Can’t have you doing two things at once. Thank God you weren’t chewing gum, too, there could have been injuries.”

  “You are such a…sweet friend,” Susan had said.

  “Where are you?” Addy had asked with exaggerated exasperation.

  “TGIF.”

  “I’ll bring the spare keys over, but you can never call me MOM again,” Addy said, smiling into the phone, her eyes sparkling.

  “Okay,” Susan had answered. “How about I call you a mother?”

  “I’ll take you over,” Tim had said, bending to pull on his sneakers.

  “Don’t be silly. It’s just across the river. I’ll be back in an hour, longer if she buys me a drink.”

  She had leaned over and kissed him good-bye, missing slightly and kissing the corner of his mouth.

  So casual, so careless, it had been one toss-away kiss among the thousands they had shared. Nothing about it said that it was the last one.

  Tim fell asleep in the chair, Addy in his dreams, Brian and Diane on his mind.

  He awoke befuddled and stiff. The room was dark and quiet. The digital clock by the bed read four thirty. He went into the bathroom and washed his face, looking up at his sleepy and confused face in the mirror. Was he trying to find Brian and Diane because he’d lost Addy; was he trying to help them because no one had helped her?

  It didn’t matter. He would search the tomb and help them if they were there, report them missing if they weren’t, because they weren’t coming back to the hotel room where their tickets, luggage and passports were waiting.

  The old clerk was asleep on a chair behind the counter. Tim slipped past him and into the courtyard. The warm Egyptian air was heavy with the weight of the darkness, filled with a promise of mystery.

  Off to the west, the pyramids were hidden by the night. Tim turned slowly. The trees behind him, along the edge of the Mena House courtyard, were shadows etched against the eastern sky where night was beginning to lose its grip.

  As he looked into the fading darkness, the opening words of The Rubaiyat came to him.

  “Awake! For morning in the bowl of night

  Has flung the stone that puts the stars to flight;

  And lo! The hunter of the East has caught

  The Sultan’s turret in a noose of light.”

  Catching the scent of jasmine as he turned back toward the main house, Tim suddenly realized how far he had traveled from his home and his family, from his past.

  He walked quickly across the deserted courtyard.

  When he stepped through the lobby doors, he came to a halt.

  A sand-colored tile floor stretched out before him. A red-jacketed clerk holding a water can turned slowly away from a wildly colorful bouquet of flowers held by a polished brass pot, which sat atop a carved wooden stand at the center of a magnificent oriental rug.

  The boundaries of the lobby were marked by carved wooden columns fronted by small palm trees planted in more polished brass pots. The beige plaster ceiling was almost hidden by angled wooden beams woven together like window tracery to form an arabesque pattern. In the middle of the lobby, a large Islamic lamp hung from a coffered ceiling, four of its wooden panels inset with octangular carvings.

  It was a scene from a dream, an oriental palace brought to life.

  Last night, nervous about breaking into Brian and Diane’s room, he had walked through the lobby to the bar without even noticing it. Now it looked magical and mysterious.

  Tim saw the desk clerk watching him and realized that aside from the clerk and the man who was watering the plants, he was only person in the lobby. He walked over to the clerk and tried his Arabic, “Sabah el-kheir.”

  The clerk smiled. “Good morning to you, sir,” he answered, recognizing Tim’s accent and telling him that he could speak English.

  “I couldn’t sleep,” Tim said. “I’m going to Saqqara this morning and I’m kind of keyed up. Is there anyplace I can get some breakfast?”

  The clerk nodded and pointed off to a red-carpeted stairway to the left of the reception desk. “Al Shams is always open,” he said.

  “Shukran,” Tim said.

  The clerk smiled. “You’re welcome, sir,” he answered.

  Tim looked around the deserted lobby. “When do the taxi drivers start to arrive?”

  “Usually after breakfast, sir, in . . .” he looked at a clock behind the counter, “three hours, perhaps.”

  “None earlier?”

  “No, but I know a driver I could call. He could be here by the time you finish your breakfast. Would you like me to retain him for you?”

  “Yes,” Tim said. “Please. Thank you. Ana mamnoon.”

  The clerk nodded. “It is nothing, sir. Enjoy your breakfast.”

  When Tim returned to the lobby, the clerk raised his hand and waved to him.

  “Na’am,” Tim said as he reached the counter.

  The clerk nodded toward the doorway where a sleepy-eyed, young Egyptian stood, his hands stiffly at his sides.

  “His name is Musa. He is a very good driver. And he is my sister’s husband’s brother. He will treat you very well.”

  “Musa?”

  “Yes, Musa.” The clerk looked at Tim expectantly and Tim realized he was expecting a tip. He held out a five-pound note and raised his eyebrows in question.

  The clerk took the money smoothly. “Bissalama,” he said.

  Tim shook his head. “I’m sorry, I don’t know that word.’

  “It means ‘have a safe journey.’ ”

  The predawn light fell on an empty parking lot. On the twenty-minute ride, Tim had decided to take Musa with him into the tomb, he would be another set of hands to help carry Brian and Diane if they were down there and needed help.

  As they walked from the unlit parking lot, headlights appeared on the road leading to Saqqara. For a moment Tim thought it was the police, that he had been followed, but then he realized that he was being paranoid. No one knew he was planning to illegally enter a closed tomb.

  He and Musa passed through the door at the entrance wall and entered the southern courtyard. Behind them, Tim heard the slam of a car door.

  “Hello! Marhaba! Bonjour!” a voice called from the parking lot.

  Tim walked on, ignoring it. Musa, walking beside him, said, “It is the guardian of the antiquities. We did not purchase tickets.”

  Tim shook his head. He saw the tomb of Kanakht just ahead and didn’t want a guard to tell him it was off limits again.

  “We couldn’t, Musa. They weren’t at the ticket booth.”

  “No,” Musa sa
id. “We are not to be here without them. Without paying the fee.”

  Tim kept walking. “Well, we’re already in here. We’ll pay them on the way out.”

  Musa stopped. “No, I am sorry. We must pay them first. If they are not here, we do not pay them. But now that they are here we must pay them. I must not have the guardian of the antiquities angry. We must go back and pay them.”

  “Hello, please! Min fadlak! Bonjour!” the voice called again.

  Tim was a few steps past Musa, just a few steps from the tomb. He turned to the young driver. Tim understood that Musa made his living bringing tourists to the sites, he needed the ‘guardians of the tomb’ to remain his friends.

  ”OK, I’ll wait here.” He took three twenty-dollar bills from his jacket and gave the money to Musa. “Here, you buy the tickets, pay the guardians of the tomb, whatever. Is this enough?”

  Musa looked at the money, more than triple the admission fee. It was true what his brother’s wife had said about the Americans, they were wealthy beyond belief. He nodded, took the money and left Tim standing alone by the Tomb of Kanakht.

  As soon as Musa passed through the entrance door, Tim turned and walked as fast as he could through the loose sand. He opened the gate to the Tomb of Kanakht and stepped onto the iron grating. He turned and smoothed out the sand under the gate. Then he gripped the newel of the spiral staircase and started climbing down into the tomb.

  Once his head was below ground level, he turned on his flashlight.

  He quickly stepped down a half dozen steps and then stopped to listen. There were no sounds from outside. He took six more steps and then stopped. Once he was farther down the staircase, he moved without stopping until he had reached the bottom.

  At the bottom of the stairs, turned off his flashlight and listened again.

  It would take Musa and the guard some time to search the above-ground complex before they would even think of him being in this tomb, he thought.

  After his breathing had slowed from the nervous descent and he still hadn’t heard any sounds from above, he turned on the flashlight and looked carefully around the chamber. Hunters on a reed boat still had their spears raised over a roaring hippopotamus on one wall. On another wall, a banquet was in progress. Dancing girls arched backward, their hair hanging to the floor. Kanakht and his wife sat side-by-side holding cups in their hands into which a servant girl poured wine. To the left, a table held loaves of bread, roasted geese and ducks, baskets of grapes and plates of lentils and chickpeas. Beneath it stood jars of beer.

  Some of the outlined figures had not been painted. The other two walls were bare; the tomb had not been finished. Tim played the light slowly over the walls, looking for cracks or any straight lines that would indicate a man-made opening. He moved the light over the floor looking for soft spots or signs of an opening to a shaft.

  Finished in the first chamber, Tim remembered to stoop below the lintel when he walked through the doorway to the next chamber. The decorations here were more formal, stylized paintings of gods and goddesses. Again the paintings were unfinished. And again there were no obvious openings.

  He lay on the floor and used his light to scan across the flat surface. He saw footprints in the dust, no doubt some of them his from his visit two nights ago. Seized by an idea, he stood close to the wall and tried to look at the surface from a low angle, hoping to highlight handprints, although what that might tell him, he didn’t know.

  “Hello, Mr. Tim,” Musa’s voice echoed through the outer chamber. It sounded distant. Musa was still above ground.

  Tim pushed away from the wall, his heart racing.

  He walked quickly through the chamber to the doorway that led to the main burial room with the stone sarcophagus. Inside he stooped close to the floor and shined the light around the line where the wall and floor met.

  “Mr. Tim, Mr. Tim,” Musa called from above.

  Tim froze as he heard two sets of footsteps on the iron staircase.

  He abandoned his search in the tomb chamber and hurried to the broken wall.

  Leaning into the opening, he looked across the broken stones to the floor inside. As he did, he heard Musa and the guide reach the bottom of the staircase. They were arguing in Arabic, but they were talking too fast. He couldn’t understand what they were saying.

  In the passageway he saw ridges of sand that could be footprints.

  He stepped across the fallen stones, careful not to trip.

  “Hello, Mr. Tim.”

  The acoustics in the tomb made the voice sound as if Musa was at Tim’s shoulder. Tim jerked around, expecting to see the driver standing there. The chamber was empty, but he saw light shining through the doorway on the other side of the sarcophagus.

  He walked down the hidden passageway. He moved the light around the ceiling, down the walls and across the floor. The hallway went about five feet and then stopped. No one was here and there were no hiding places, no open holes, no bodies, no other exits.

  He stooped to give himself a low-angled view of the floor. The sand was rippled on the floor at his feet and down the passage for another step or two. After that it was smooth and undisturbed.

  Tim heard Musa and the guard talking, they sounded closer.

  He wondered if they could see his light glimmering from this hidden passageway.

  He followed the disturbed sand to the wall and looked closely, placing his cheek against the wall and shining the light across the wall instead of directly at it. Just beyond where the footsteps stopped there was a line running up the wall, not exactly a crack, but a straight ridge.

  Tim stood in front of the wall where the sand was most uneven. He stooped and looked at the floor. The sand was scraped away in an arc, as if someone had taken a wide broom and swept it away from the wall in a half circle.

  “Hello, Mr.Tim,” Musa called. They were in the tomb chamber, just on the other side of the wall behind him. He looked desperately at the wall, sure that it held some secret.

  He turned off his flashlight so that Musa and the guard wouldn’t see the light. He stood unmoving, willing them to walk away.

  A soft light from the burial chamber filtered through the hole in the wall behind him. The deflected light showed shadows that Tim’s harsh direct light had not. Two handprints were on the wall, just above his head. He leaned forward and reached up to the prints, placing his hands against the wall.

  He pressed against the wall and waited. Nothing happened.

  “Mr. Tim, Mr. Tim.”

  The voice was just on the other side of the wall, the lights bobbing closer.

  Tim twisted to look at the opening, shifting his weight against the wall, and it moved, quietly pivoting to create a doorway.

  Part of the beam from Musa’s light flashed through the hole three feet from Tim.

  Tim slipped through the open doorway. On the other side he pressed against the extended edge of the stone door and it silently swung shut. He leaned against the stone and listened for Musa’s voice, but the tomb was silent.

  Djefi, First Prophet of Sobek

  Ahmes couldn’t stop talking and Paneb, who usually had to remind himself to be patient with his adopted son, was as excited as the eight-year-old boy was.

  Earlier, in the pre-dawn darkness when they had started walking from their home in Ineb-Hedj, the boy had been quiet, still sleepy. Now as Re’s sacred barge emerged from its nightly journey through Khert-Neter there was light for their walk through the narrow wadi to the entrance of the vizier’s tomb in Saqqara. Ahmes skipped eagerly through the sand, sometimes walking backwards through the shallow gully so he could watch his adored stepfather as they talked about the gods who had arrived two days ago.

  Ahmes was naked, his head shaved except for a side lock of hair, knotted near the scalp above his ear and hanging loose to his neck.

  Paneb, whose head was shaved smooth, wore only a short linen kilt, which he would remove when they reached the tomb and he started working. He wore it to please his
wife, Takhaaenbbastet, who had made the bleached white cloth herself and who thought he should wear it as a sign of his rank. She said that only common workers went about without a kilt.

  Although he was chief artist at Saqqara, known even to Netjerikhet Djoser, King of the Two Lands, Paneb knew who was chief of his household. So if Taki wanted him to wear a kilt, then he would. It was a small matter and it gave her joy. But he knew better than to make it dirty.

  “The netjer was so tall, Father. Have you ever seen anyone so tall? And so strong?” Ahmes stopped his prancing long enough to mimic a spear toss.

  Paneb shook his head. He had done a lot of head shaking in the two days since the gods had walked out of the tomb, the god smiling, the goddess squinting in the light, her skin so pale you could see through it.

  That day had promised to be exciting enough.

  Paneb and Ahmes were to escort Djefi, high priest of Sobek, the crocodile god, to inspect Kanakht’s tomb in Saqqara.

  Kanakht, overseer of the Two Lands and adviser to King Djoser, had instructed Paneb to paint scenes in the tomb entrance showing himself with the crocodile god. And now Djefi was arriving at Ineb-Hedj to approve Paneb's sketches.

  Paneb and Ahmes had watched Djefi’s boat approach the pier used by officials of The Two Lands. There was a mast in the center of the boat, but no sail was unfurled. Paneb explained to Ahmes that sails were used when traveling up the River Iteru, because the winds blew that way, always against the current of the river. On trips down river, the flow of the River Iteru and oars provided the speed.

  The cedar wood boat slid silently along the wooden pier. Water dripped from the glistening oars as the ten rowers pulled them up onto the boat. One of the boatmen jumped off to secure the vessel.

  The messenger who arranged the visit had told Paneb to prepare a sedan chair for Djefi and to have four strong men to carry it. He had emphasized the word strong.

  The carriers stood beside Paneb and Ahmes waiting to see how heavy their burden would be today.