THE HATHOR HOLOCAUST Read online

  In time, the body found its way to a tomb in Alexandria, the city founded by Alexander, where Julius Caesar among others came to pay their respects. Later a money-hungry Ptolemy melted down the gold casket, and legend told that the body was next displayed in a glass casket.

  The honey part of the story was certainly true, he thought, gazing down at the honey-coloured dunes.

  Because of its antibacterial and anaerobic qualities and its tendency not to spoil, honey was often used as a preservative for transporting cadavers over long distances. Honey’s high sugar concentration killed bacteria and its low moisture content prevented organisms from multiplying.

  He recalled a gruesome medieval tale told by an Arab historian about a group of tomb robbers in Egypt who discovered a jar of honey in a crypt. Delighted at their good fortune, they squatted around the jar, dipping their bread in the contents, until one discovered a hair caught up in his honey-twirled morsel. Curious, the robbers examined the jar more closely and discovered to their horror the preserved body of a child curled up at the bottom. Had the same fate befallen Alexander?

  The tale belonged to a class of story that delighted in the greedy receiving their just desserts - literally. Another like it was the tale about Admiral Horatio Nelson. When Nelson died, after defeating Napoleon’s fleet at Trafalgar, the crew stored his body in a cask of brandy for the journey home and thence transferred it to a casket filled with distilled wine. Thirsty sailors aboard his ship were said to have helped themselves to Nelson’s embalming fluid, unawares, which gave birth to the naval term for illegal drinking: ‘tapping the Admiral.’

  Anson pictured the body of the Macedonian lying in honey like a fly in amber, his curls floating in golden fluid.

  It gave him a new thought.

  Would honey have crystallized over time? Perhaps the image of Alexander just barely visible through a congealed medium of honey crystals had given birth to the story of the conqueror lying in a glass or crystal sarcophagus.

  Why was he dwelling on such things?

  A sign of a morbid state of mind.

  Don’t stop the tablets.

  A good thing he’d skipped a hotel breakfast, though, normally rounded off with toast and honey, a favourite accompaniment with morning coffee.

  His mind drifted back to the disc of Ra.

  Could the Atenet bring death and an apotheosis?

  He reflected on a prophecy of Hermes-Thoth that spoke of an epoch-changing discovery in Egypt.

  Those gods who ruled the earth will be restored, and they will be installed in a city at the furthest threshold of Egypt which will be founded towards the setting sun and to which all human kind will hasten to by land and sea.

  This place could fit the bill. Siwa Oasis would be about as far west as ancient Egyptian settlement went, almost at Libya’s border.

  Did the prophecy have something to do with the scroll?

  More skeins, more knots in a puzzle of Gordian proportions.

  The possibilities seemed as endless as the desert, but now they were circling, coming down to land.

  ‘CGI, Computer Generated Imagery’.

  These were the words that came to his mind at the sight of Siwa Oasis from the air.

  It lay in a depression in the empire of sand, choked by dense groves of date palms and olive trees, ‘the fruits of the Oracle of Amon’, while the Temple of the Oracle thrust up from the heart of the impossible greenery and lakes shone like crystals.

  Chapter 22

  AN EGYPTIAN in a battered Land Rover met him at the airstrip, a man in his forties, dressed in western clothes.

  Anson held out his hand.

  “Anson Hunter,” he said.

  The man ignored his greeting. He jumped into the vehicle. Anson shrugged and climbed into a rickety passenger seat beside him. No air-conditioning. This was going to be a sizzling field trip.

  “I take you to the tomb of Eskander, but you wear blindfold.” He handed Anson a strip of yellowed linen. “You take off blindfold, I take you back.” The man spoke English, though clipped.

  His terms were disappointing, but clear.

  Anson put on the blindfold and the world turned dark.

  The vehicle pulled off.

  “Your great grandfather worked with Howard Carter?” Anson said. “One question intrigues me. Why would Carter happily dig up an Egyptian pharaoh like Tutankhamun, yet swear to take the secret of Alexander’s tomb site to his grave?”

  “Alexander is classic, Tutankhamun only Egyptian.”

  Was it racist values of another age at work? It was certainly true that in Howard Carter’s day, Europe stood in awe of classical Greece and Rome.

  Egypt was just an exotic footnote.

  But Carter’s discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb had changed all that.

  “Another question I must ask. Is the tomb intact?”

  “You will come there soon.”

  I hope I will be coming soon to some answers, Anson thought. “Why have you kept this discovery a secret?”

  “My ancestor swore a great oath. I honour him.”

  “What about Alexander’s treasure?”

  “You will come there soon.”

  Coming there soon proved to be a slight exaggeration.

  ‘Soon’ meant a journey of several hours over bone-jolting desert and rocks, slides down sand dunes and a lurching stop when the Land Rover seemed to sink to its axles.

  “Stuck? I’ll help you,” Anson offered.

  “I fix. You sit.” After some revving and gear crunching, they were off again.

  Anson heard a low, grating sound. Stones being dragged off a metal plate? Then his tour guide took his elbow and led him down steps. And down more steps. He heard the click of a torch going on.

  The steps ended and they walked on a flat stone surface. An open expanse of a hall or chamber surrounded them, he guessed, judging by the echoes of their footsteps.

  “Can I take this off now?” With no answer, he pulled it off and reached into a pocket for a torch. Before he could turn it on, another voice spoke from behind him.

  “Welcome to the tomb of… Anson Hunter.”

  He turned. In the haze of light from the entrance, he saw the bearded Iranian man, the one who had sat with Saleh Haroun in the black limousine at the airport.

  Hassan.

  He was still wearing the mild, assassin’s smile.

  “Shouldn’t you be holding a Koran?” Anson said, looking at the handgun.

  “You look surprised. What did you expect to see in this tomb? I’m sorry, I have misled you a little. This is not the final resting place of Alexander the Great, it is just the empty tomb of a Berber chieftain - and now it’s going to be yours, too.”

  This was the price you paid for being too flexible, Anson thought. But the lure had been hard to resist. He’d followed this trail like a foraging bee attracted to honey in a neighbouring hive, but there was no honey and no Alexander.

  Just this empty place and this hollow feeling inside.

  “You mean I fell for a stupid trick?” Anson said.

  “Not so stupid, evidently.”

  All this just to lure him here to this lonely spot? Then the blindfold had not been so much about hiding a secret location as about hiding the fact that this man was following. And it served another purpose. If he ever found a way out of this situation, he’d have no idea of his location.

  “Why go to this much trouble? Siwa is a long way to come. Couldn’t you have chosen somewhere closer?”

  “Oh no. That was not my reading of you. It had to be a grand adventure to make it irresistible. Nubia, Egypt, a desert oasis… it fitted your wide-ranging curiosity.”

  Nubia.

  So this man had been on his trail before the meeting with Haroun at Cairo airport.

  “Why didn’t the Egyptian Government just deny me entry? Why do they let me in just to let you loose on me?”

  The man’s pause was just long enough to be revealing.

  “You thin
k Saleh Haroun sent me? No. I have taken you off his hands.”

  He was working behind the high official’s back? Why?

  Anson was in the dark in more ways that one. Or was he?

  He snapped on the torch beam, throwing a wash of light into a pair of dark, humorous eyes. Instinct impels a person to blink in a flash of light and Anson seized the moment to kick out. Hassan jerked aside to protect himself, shifting the barrel of the gun.

  Now Anson grabbed the gun arm and bent it back. A clattering explosion batted around the chamber. The Egyptian came to help.

  Anson twisted the arm further. Another shot shattered the ceiling, slowing the Egyptian’s advance.

  The man swung a fist to club the back of Anson’s neck. A bright pain shot through his skull.

  He held on, leveraged the gun arm another few degrees and the fingers weakened. A blow missed his neck and pounded his shoulder.

  But Anson had him off balance.

  He shoved Hassan to the floor and ran towards daylight at the entrance.

  He covered the distance and climbed the steps three at a time, before another explosion rang out. Something hummed past his ear and stone spat against his cheek.

  He was out in bright sunshine.

  He paused to slam an iron plate shut, hunted for a way to jam it tight and trap them down there or at least to slow their pursuit.

  No time for that.

  He kept going.

  There were two vehicles, a new Land Cruiser parked beside the battered hulk left by the Egyptian. The newer model came with air-conditioning.

  Anson chose the air-conditioning.

  The Iranian must have been too hot, or too confident. He had left the key in the ignition and the engine running to keep the cabin cool. He was evidently sure about making a swift resolution inside the tomb.

  Anson passed from desert zone to the tundra chill of an air-conditioned cabin. Another shot rang out as he roared away.

  Just follow the tracks into the void.

  There were no short cuts, handy corners or places to hide from a pursuer in the desert.

  He roared up a dune. That was the easy part. Sometimes dunes ended in a sheer drop on the other side.

  A sandy valley sped up in the windscreen. He careered to the bottom, skidding over two sets of vehicle tracks.

  The trick was to go fast enough so that you did not sink in the sand - or risk being overtaken from the pursuing vehicle - yet not too fast that you could stop yourself from tumbling over a ruinous cliff.

  Were those more gunshots he heard over the hammer of the engine? He looked in the side-mirror. It shattered into cobwebs. Gunshots all right. And not bad from a bucketing Land Cruiser.

  Don’t get stuck in soft sand.

  That’d be disaster.

  Maybe there was a gun in the glovebox. He leant across and ripped it open. Just a bottle of mineral water.

  He grabbed it, tore off the cap and downed great gulps.

  That helped.

  In the rearview mirror he saw the pursuing Land Rover put on a burst. He flattened his foot to the floorboards and climbed a towering dune.

  Omigod. Just what he dreaded. Not a downward slope but space.

  The Land Cruiser left the surface and screamed through the air. Land like a cat. Land like a cat. On all four legs. Make that wheels.

  He waited for the bone jarring jolt, or worse, a toppling spin.

  The wheels sank to the axles, or so it seemed, but it had merely crushed the shock absorbers and he lurched on.

  He saw the pursuing vehicle climb into the sky. They seemed to have come at the rise at a more oblique angle. He pictured it landing hard and then going into a spin, rolling over the cabin then ending up on its side.

  Wishful thinking. No such thing occurred.

  The driver made a four-point landing.

  Anson muttered and sped on.

  They’re better at this than me. With every minute they were closing. He reached a sand sheet and sped along it.

  One side of the vehicle hit softer sand, two wheels sinking and tugging at the steering. He straightened. Treacherous. Firm sand and soft sand, meeting on a knife-edge. That gave him an idea. How far did this line of variation run? He tested it, by gently turning the wheel into the soft patch again. The right side sagged but before the vehicle dipped over, he wrestled it back on track.

  A flick of a glance in the rearview mirror told him they were close. He could see the Iranian hanging out, the gun in his hand.

  Anson slammed on the brakes. The nose dipped and the wheels dug.

  It looked, to all appearances, as if he’d mired himself in soft sand.

  The pursuing driver spun his wheel. Anson guessed he’d go right, getting in close to the driver’s side.

  The driver swung left, then changed his mind.

  He turned right, hard, and ploughed into floury sand.

  Anson gave them a wave then tried to pull off. His wheels spun.

  Not now.

  Pretence had turned to reality.

  The bearded pursuer threw open the door and came running across the sand.

  Anson slammed down into a lower gear. The vehicle revved, crept up, sank back. Again. Yes, now it was creeping, now waddling out.

  The man paused to take his shot. Anson ducked as the side window smashed and the bullet ripped into the headrest, but he was free and speeding away.

  Another bullet smashed his rear windscreen. A parting shot.

  With two windows broken the air-conditioning was not as efficient as he’d have liked, but he made it back to the airstrip. He should be in time to catch the next flight back to Cairo.

  Chapter 23

  THE OBLIGATORY Wonders of Cairo itinerary began with a morning visit to the Great Pyramid and the Sphinx.

  The day began with a 5am wake up call for a private gathering at dawn inside the Sphinx enclosure, and a group meditation on site.

  The tour party included Neith, the young man Scott hidden behind a baseball cap and sunglasses, a band of attractive women in sunhats and “Ancient Dawn” T shirts – he dubbed them the Chantresses of Amun after they chanted softly together at the back of the mini bus - and a man in his early forties, a thick-set stubbly man bulking up a safari jacket. He introduced himself as Vincent Kraft, a defence lobbyist, a smouldering hulk who stepped right into your personal space and murmured in an intimate way that excluded everyone else. Anson dubbed him Space Invader. His specialty was said to be archeo-astrology.

  The chantresses included a judge, a senator, a doctor, an alchemical healer, psychics and astrologers.

  Gathered in the Sphinx enclosure, between the fortress-paws of the lion, the group formed a circle, holding hands and closing their eyes.

  Why close your eyes in a place like this?

  They began an ‘om’ that sounded like the hum of the warming earth. A deep rumble came out of the barrel chest of the lobbyist.

  Anson left them. He went for a stroll around the lion-mountain, a backdrop of pyramids making arrow signs to heaven in the golden haze.

  He was doing his own meditation as he circled the beast.

  The sphinx. So familiar. So inevitable. So terrible.

  Like some natural, inescapable law.

  The vision of it filled a sphinx-spaced gap in his mind that had always been there it seemed, like a familiar photo of an old friend that surprises you years later with its unchanging immediacy.

  ‘Here I am.’

  Am I sending that message to the sphinx, or is the sphinx sending it to me?

  He felt a sadness that this seminal image in his life went on looking the same way in his absence and had gone on looking this way for thousands of years before him and would do so years after he’d passed. He felt a pang of guilt as if his neglect had somehow worn its edges like a worn photograph.

  Time had knocked the stuffing out of the poor caged monster in its limestone enclosure, he thought sadly, its body a patchwork of inlaid blocks and mortar. It seemed the New Ag
e group was not the only group with influence on the site, however.

  He was contemplating the flank of the sphinx when he heard a heavy footfall and turned to discover he was not alone.

  He recognised the tall American at once from news clips. It was Thompson Rush, a massively tall, senatorial looking American, a one-time Presidential hopeful and now head of an organisation called New Revelation. Their remit was archaeological research and enlightenment and they were a Christian outfit with one foot in archaeology and the other in the biblical Book of Revelations.

  He joined Anson and introduced himself.

  “I know who you are. Read some of your books and enjoy your blogs. I caught your talk in Washington. You’re that alternative Egyptology guy.” He patted Anson’s shoulder in an avuncular way.

  Anson noticed a pair of Rush’s young lieutenants standing a few yards back, clean-cut men in collar and tie who looked halfway between FBI and Mormons.

  “I’d like to talk to you about your theories,” Thompson Rush said.

  Anson shrugged and the heavy hand on his shoulder slid away.

  “There’s not much more to add, beyond the blogs and the talk.”

  “I could add something - funds. For your investigations. You’d only have to say the word.”

  “Really?”

  “I want to see your quest succeed and I’d be willing to contribute to your investigations.”

  “That’s mighty neighbourly of you.”

  “Do you mind if we walk? I’ve been cooped up on a long flight.”

  Rush’s long legs evidently needed stretching. They began a stroll around the perimeter of the sphinx. Rush’s two young men followed at a distance.

  “What’s your interest in my interest?” Anson said.

  “I like to get things done.”

  Like World War Three? Armageddon? The end of the world? Rush was a dispensationalist, a mainly US movement of religious zealots who hoped to hasten the arrival of the ‘end times’ Yet, he didn’t look tired of life; maybe he hoped to be one of the chosen who’d be snatched up to the heavens in the rapture, before the shooting wars began.

  Anson wondered if these people realised that, for different, ostensibly Biblical motives, they were in lockstep with the so-called New Age and New World Order conspiracy that had America and The Middle East as its focus and ancient Egyptian mystery religion as its impetus. They were strange bedfellows who could end up sharing the same grave, along with all of humanity.