THE SMITING TEXTS_Anson Hunter_Egyptology action adventure thrillers Read online

  He nodded.

  “Your academic reputation would never recover.” He looked at the others in the room. “And the rest of you? All US Homeland Security? I didn’t know the homeland stretched quite as far as Egypt.”

  Bloem looked defensive.

  “Homeland security is a global issue that transcends American borders. It’s better to defeat hostile elements overseas so we never have to face them here, and our overseas workers do a great deal to disrupt hostile networks who would do us harm. But of course our lead intelligence agencies are on board.”

  Anson jumped to his feet.

  “Speaking of which, let’s jot a few alternative theories on the board.” He’d spotted a whiteboard on wheels and marker pens scattered on a shelf beneath. He wheeled the board around so they could all see. He picked up a pen, unscrewed the cap and started to write the letter ‘L’ at the top of the board, but the pen made a dry squeak. He tossed it aside like an unusable idea and picked up another, sniffing it first and wrinkling his nose. “Whew. That clears the head. I hope our thinking is as pungent.” He jotted a heading on the board.

  LOCI OF POWER

  Now he turned an almost accusatory glare on the group.

  “Go with me here. Put aside the materiality that is your nation’s genius for a moment. Let’s think about what famous sources of power or danger existed in Egypt in ancient times – mythical, legendary, anything. What could possibly constitute a threat from the ancient past? Apart from the Ten Plagues of Egypt, that is, which Exodus tells us was God’s handiwork. Of course, plagues were by no means limited to the time of Moses. It was for this reason that Egypt fashioned so many statues of Sekhmet-Hathor, the lioness-headed goddess of plagues and destruction, in the hope of placating her. It’s worth noting that archaeological evidence has linked the origin of the Black Death, or bubonic plague, to a specific site in ancient Egypt, the workers’ village in Amarna, home of those who built tombs for pharaohs Akhenaten and, later, Tutankhamun. Pharaoh’s Plague can rage through populations, then lie as dormant as a mummy sleeping in a tomb, sometimes for centuries, before emerging to wreak havoc once again. If you could bottle it, especially in its pneumonic form, it would make a dandy bio-terrorist weapon. Don’t forget, in the Byzantine age, the so-called Justinian Plague took 100 million lives and, in the 1300s, the Black Death killed twenty-five million people, one quarter of Europe’s population.”

  “It’s one possibility our people are tracking,” Bloem said. “But the evidence seems to go somewhere else.”

  “Then what other source of power and danger existed?” Anson said, more to himself than to the others.

  “There was the sacred Book of Thoth, according to mythology,” Melinda said, cautiously.

  “Exactly. A book of sacred power said to have been written by the ibis headed god of magic and writing himself.”

  The Book of Thoth

  He jotted it down on the whiteboard in a scrawl like a seismograph.

  “It was a forbidden and terrible book of power that you opened at your peril and it came with a warning label: When you open this book, it will release the powers of the earth, the sky, the waters, the infernal regions of the abyss, the mountains, beasts, birds, creatures, reptiles as well as the magical powers of the gods of Egypt themselves...’” In fact, you didn’t even need to open it to gain the benefits. According to ancient Egyptian beliefs, just to possess such a scroll of power was enough to invest its owner with potency.”

  “Do you have a theory about where this book might be now?” Bloem said.

  Anson shrugged.

  “A magician prince and priest named Khaemwaset, son of Rameses II, is said to have stolen the scroll from the tomb of another ancient magician and by so doing brought a series of nasty repercussions on himself. Did he put the scroll back in its original resting place, as one version of the tale tells, or take it with him to his own tomb? The mystery of the prince’s final burial place has still to be solved. But is this book our candidate? The Book of Thoth seems to have been a book of magical knowledge, not a weapon of smiting.”

  He turned back to the whiteboard.

  “How about this one?”

  He wrote:

  Lost Hall of Records

  “With all due respect, that’s about as discredited as the lost continent of Atlantis,” Melinda said. “A few alternative theorists still cling to the belief that such a hall is hidden on the Giza plateau, under the Sphinx, with proof of a past technological age, although scans have shown nothing to encourage them.”

  “But are they looking in the right place?” Anson said. “There are writings that predict an epoch-changing discovery in Egypt. The prophecy of Hermes-Thoth says of this time: ‘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 -West, that is to say - and to which all human kind will hasten to by land and sea.’”

  “What’s there to fear about a hall of records?” Bloem said.

  “It depends what records it contains. Don’t think City Hall. We’re not talking about a collection of bureaucratic filing cabinets, but the records of forbidden knowledge - the secret wisdom and power of the gods perhaps. Or maybe the records of ancient armaments and technology. Aircraft, missiles, laser guns… Just kidding. No, this mythical hall could be a possible locus of power, but a weapon? I’m not sure. Some other contenders must be considered…”

  He added to the list.

  Pyramids Temples Tombs

  Sacred images/relics of the Neteru (gods)

  Other sources of execration texts

  Other images or objects of smiting

  “They’re all potential loci of power,” he said. “And you could expect to find them all over Egypt.”

  “Then you see the extent of our problem,” Melinda said. “This threat is not only hard to grasp, its source and nature are almost impossible to identify. What is it exactly? Where exactly is its source in Egypt? It’s like trying to find the proverbial lost needle.”

  And not Cleopatra’s needle, either, he thought. More like a lost pebble in a pyramid.

  He did see their predicament. The Homeland Security people faced a threat from a mysterious and ancient past that for them was almost impossible to comprehend, yet was also impossible to ignore. They must have more evidence than they were prepared to disclose.

  Intelligence community people spent their lives seeking out the unknown, he supposed, but they were evidently helpless in the face of the unknowable. This was a realm where conventional intelligence gathering and analysis could no longer help them.

  Could he?

  Anson tossed the pen back on the whiteboard shelf, where it rattled, like the sound of frustration.

  “Maybe we just take the tour and see what happens. There’s nothing like a trip to Egypt to stimulate the imagination.”

  Chapter 5

  PROFESSOR Emory Hunter fled through the mastaba tomb.

  Painted reliefs on the walls loomed like a nightmarish slideshow of Old Kingdom Egypt.

  Men threw cattle to the ground, slaughtering them with butchering knives.

  Servants led fattened antelopes to sacrifice.

  The Egyptologist, expert on ancient Egypt’s funerary customs, was running for his life. He lurched around a corner, his shoulder grazing a wall.

  Don’t let this be a dead end.

  The dimly lit chambers and hallways were almost as familiar as the professor’s Near Eastern Studies Department half a world away. Now, in his panic, everything looked different.

  He glimpsed a hyena rolled over onto its back. Men force-fed the creature, not to fatten it for the table, but to sate the carnivore’s appetite so that it would not immediately begin devouring the prey on a hunt for ibex in the desert.

  Magical symbols of nourishment for a dead man’s soul.

  But now these images struck the fleeing man as omens of disaster, reminding him that Mereruka’s ‘house
of eternity’ was not only a place of symbolic offerings. It was also a place of slaughter. Great rings on the floor of the tomb marked sites where ka priests tethered cattle and antelopes before sacrificing them to provide for Mereruka’s afterlife.

  Another wall threw up a stone relief of the Vizier himself. The tomb owner stood profiled in brutal scale, muscular and kilted.

  His wife, by contrast, stood diminutively beside his leg, her head no higher than his knee. Inhaling the scent of a lotus, she looked like a doll, ancient Egyptian womanhood at its most demure, while her antithesis, an angry shadow, chased after Emory in the gloom.

  Where was his attacker?

  Who was she?

  The figure had approached soundlessly.

  The striking, scholarly man in his sixties, had been standing in the tomb, a white panama hat in his hand, contemplating images of the dead man, when she had drifted into his concentration.

  Like a shade of the female dead ‘coming forth by day’, the veiled form appeared to have materialised out of the tomb’s reliefs.

  He gave a gasp of surprise.

  Just an Egyptian woman in full black hijab, yet an unnerving sight.

  The figure spoke.

  “You look as though you have seen a ghost.” She gave a low laugh, made sinister behind the cloth. “But no, Professor Emory Hunter would never contemplate the idea of a ghost, not even the holy Christian one. Emory the doubter, who doubts even heaven.”

  “I’m sorry, your appearance startled me.”

  “My appearance? Come now, is the dress of a Muslim woman so startling?”

  The shadow revealed jewelled eyes that shone through the slit of an Iranian-style, full black chador that covered her body.

  “Well, surprising anyway,” he said. “Especially here in a tomb.” Even more so, he thought, when this apparition appears to know who I am.

  Traditional Muslim women were not common visitors to sites of antiquity in Egypt, especially on their own, unaccompanied by a male family member, and whenever he met one it unsettled his composure.

  In spite of a return to fundamentalism in the Middle East that began in Egypt, only a minority of women outside of rural Egypt wore the full Islamic dress, draping themselves in black from head to toe and covering their hands in gloves, although one could come upon them anywhere, even in the middle of big cities like Cairo.

  They always put Emory in mind of the shrouded Ayesha, She Who Must Be Obeyed, in Rider Haggard’s African romance novel She. Ayesha’s unearthly presence had kept him reading through one whole night of dread and excitement, over half a century earlier, at the age of twelve.

  “Perhaps so,” she said. “But a visitor could rest in here away from the heat, then simply fall asleep and be quite overlooked.” She was well-educated, he noted, a fairly young woman, her speech lightly accented. She carried herself with confidence. “There are many places to disappear from the world inside this mastaba tomb, the biggest in Saqqara, with over thirty-two rooms and hallways, am I correct? Besides, I have been waiting for you, Professor.”

  “You know something about me?”

  The form, both devout and eerie, moved closer.

  He was intrigued by her now.

  “The whole world knows about you and have felt dismay at your controversial views. What a message of desolation you bring to the world from the Land of Eternity. That a belief in a hereafter, cherished by millions in ancient Egypt and also in Islam, Christianity and Judaism is false. That generations have gone to their graves resting on a broken reed. All of them swallowed by oblivion.”

  She was quoting him.

  “You’re well informed. Who are you?”

  She ignored the question.

  “What are you thinking as you stand here in Mereruka’s house of eternity?” she said.

  She moved beside him and looked up at the wall.

  Her black-gloved fingers traced in the air, without touching it, a carved and painted relief of the Old Kingdom Vizier sitting on a bed with his knees drawn up to his body while his wife knelt in front of him at the foot of the bed, playing a harp to him, a scene of sexuality discreetly coded in the Egyptian manner.

  Beneath the bed stood jars filled with redolent oils and gold jewellery used for adornment when the couple took their pleasure.

  “This scene, as they retire to bed, is a memory of the consummation of their union,” she said. “Do you not feel the life force between them that will carry with them into the afterlife?”

  The movement of her fingers appeared to conjure the scene into animation.

  He imagined he heard an echo from the past, a note plucked on the string of a harp, but a tone of rebuke in the woman’s voice snapped him back to the present.

  “Come, would you deny Mereruka the pleasure of his wife’s charms and music for eternity? Surely you feel the emotional force of the afterlife here in these high-reliefs of scenes from long ago when they were once lit by flickering oil lamps? Was this dreaming of another life in vain, these symbolic images magically designed to sustain the soul of the deceased, consecrated by chanting ka priests with sweet-smelling incense and celebrated by the gathering of the family… all just an empty lie?”

  “Oh, a debate! That’s what you’re after,” he said. Emory had always liked fervent young women and enjoyed a clash of opinions. “Let me say this. Mereruka’s tomb may paint an alluring picture of the afterlife, but that doesn’t mean it exists.”

  Her voice turned icy.

  “You are the worst kind of tomb robber.”

  “That’s a pretty harsh view of an archaeologist, but I’ve heard the criticism before.”

  “Ancient tomb robbers only took away treasure - but you would rob the dead of heaven and so rob millions of their faith. Take away Al-Akhirah - the hereafter - and you deny Allah himself.”

  “Perhaps. But sometimes I think that by taking away the myth of an afterlife I am saving lives. How? Without the promise of heavenly bliss, your fundamentalists in the Middle East will find fewer young men and women ready to strap bombs to their bodies and to die as martyrs in the name of Islam. And the same is true of militant fundamentalist Christian leaders in the West who cajole people into accepting their agendas and send our youth to die in far-flung wars with the unspoken consolation prize of a life and reunion with loved ones to come.”

  “You try to ease your conscience with such sophistry.”

  “Answer me this truthfully. What is it about my assertions that gives fundamentalists sleepless nights?“ he said. “The threat of losing heaven? Or of losing power? If people discovered that there was just one life to live, they might be more careful about throwing their lives away.”

  “You should have been more careful.”

  Her hand slid down into the chador. He gaped as he saw a matt-black automatic appear in her fist.

  “Whoa there, lady! Let’s agree to differ.”

  “Go to the hell that you do not believe in!”

  Emory Hunter raised his arms in front of his body in an ancient Egyptian gesture, as if to ward off an evil influence.

  “What is this? What do you want from me?”

  “Your eternal silence,” the veiled figure said.

  “Let’s be sensible.” The firearm looked like part of her gloved fist. He swiftly calculated his chances of overpowering her and wresting it from her. Too risky. There was sureness in her stance that made him think better of it. Maybe he could try deflecting her aim. He swung the hat, using the inside rim to snare the gun. It hit and he hooked the muzzle of the weapon aside. An explosion clattered around the enclosed space as stone spat from a wall. A circular new glyph punctuated a row of text. But his action bought him just a moment’s reprieve. She swept the firearm free.

  “Oh god,” he said in a croak. He tossed the hat at the eyes behind the veil and tried to go around her. She leapt sideways to block the exit, throwing out her draped arms like the wings of a bat.

  He spun on his heel and fled back into the mastaba t
omb. A damaged wall blocked his way. He searched the floor, peering into darkened corners. Was there something he could pick up and use as a weapon to defend himself? A stone? A mud brick? Even a fragment from a wall? Only a film of dust lay on the floor. Double back. He tried to call up in his memory the planimetric organisation of the tomb. Roughly L-shaped like two arms embracing the burial rooms of the Vizier’s wife, he recalled, and north, the chambers of Mereruka’s son. This was a family tomb.

  Family - such a safe sounding word. A memory of his abandoned son ran fleetingly through his mind like one of the passing images. Shadows thickened here as he ran. He did not remember the mastaba tomb smelling so dank before. Vaporization had caused this dankness, coming from the breath and sweat of countless sightseers, each visitor leaving between half a cup and two cups of vapour. And now his gasping breath was adding to it. Where were the throngs of visitors now? He had come here alone to meet someone who could help him take his story to the world, unwise it now seemed after the threats of harm he had received. Where was the Egyptian guard he had seen outside?

  No one seeing and no one hearing.

  It was a boast made by architects who had built the great ones’ tombs in secret. Will no one see or hear me now? What a perverse time for this to happen, on the brink of his disclosure to the world. Maybe I should not have tried to guard the secret so closely, he thought. Wanting to break the news of his discovery, he had come to this place, a favourite tomb, to meet a contact who could arrange for his heaven-and-earth-shattering secret to reach the right hands and to find its way into publication. Now he might die unseen in a dank tomb that had no bearing on his discovery. Who could he rely on to bring his revelation to the world if anything happened to him? Those officials he remembered murmuring secretively among themselves at his discovery, the ones who had told him to be silent? The ones who seemed to want to buy his silence with the curious gift for his services? He had tried to keep his secret from them for as long as he could, but it had proved far too big to hide.