Amun led Gabriel and Kemnebi through Jumoke’s to a storeroom in the back. Heaps of carpets, flat and rolled, lay on the floor. They navigated between them to a small room that served as an office.
Amun took a seat in one of the room’s two chairs and gestured for Gabriel to take the other. Kemnebi came around and laid Gabriel’s Colt on the table between them.
“How lovely,” Amun said, raising the gun and appraising it with a connoisseur’s eye. “An antique, isn’t it?”
“Yes. And I’m going to want it back.”
“Of course. If our talk goes as well as I expect, I will return it to you with pleasure.” He set the gun down again and accepted the glass of tea Kemnebi was holding out to him. A scent of mint wafted across the table. Kemnebi held a glass out to Gabriel.
“No, thanks,” Gabriel said.
“It’s very good,” Amun said, “especially when it’s so hot outside. No? Well perhaps a bit later.” Kemnebi set the glass down in front of Gabriel, some of its contents sloshing out into the saucer.
Amun picked up a cardboard tube from the floor, dug inside it with a finger, and removed a rolled print. He unfurled it, weighing down one corner with Gabriel’s gun and another with his saucer. The print showed a black-and-white photograph of a stone tablet covered in hieroglyphics. One corner of the tablet was broken off.
“Do you recognize it, Mister Hunt?” Amun asked.
“Of course,” Gabriel said. “Any undergrad would. It’s the Rosetta Stone.”
“Correct. A relic of ancient Egypt and one of the most important and most valuable artifacts ever discovered. It now unfortunately resides in the British Museum in London.”
“So?”
Amun’s brown eyes flared. “One day it shall return to Egypt, I promise you that. But that is neither here nor there.”
“Well, it’s not here,” Gabriel said. “It is there.”
Amun took a sip of his tea. His hand didn’t shake. “I know you are trying to provoke me, Mister Hunt. Perhaps I will do or say something I regret, something you could use to gain an advantage over me.” He set the cup down again. “I won’t.”
“Okay,” Gabriel said. “So you won’t. What is it you want me to do—break into the British Museum and steal the Rosetta Stone for you?”
“No, no, of course not. Nothing that simple.”
“Simple,” Gabriel said.
“There’s nothing simpler than taking something from a museum,” Amun said. “What we want your help with is considerably more difficult.”
“You going to tell me, or do I have to keep guessing?”
Amun stretched out a finger and traced it along the edge of the Rosetta Stone. “As you can see, there is a piece missing. Broken off. Lost forever. Who knows what additional information it might have contained, what secrets?”
“What’s your point?”
“What if I were to tell you, Mister Hunt, that a second entire tablet exists, twice the size of this missing piece, one that contains even more precious—more powerful—information than the stone in the British Museum? Information that could, quite simply, change the world?”
Chapter 7
Gabriel raised his eyebrows.
“I see you are skeptical,” Amun said. “What do you know about the Rosetta Stone, Mister Hunt?”
“You want a history lesson, you should ask my brother. He could talk your ear off.” Amun said nothing. “It’s, what, from the time of Ptolemy—one of the Ptolemys, anyway, something like two hundred B.C., right?”
“That’s very good, Mister Hunt,” Amun said. “Go on.”
“What else. There are three texts on the stone, or more precisely the same text written in three different languages. Comparing them was how Egyptian hieroglyphics were first deciphered.” Gabriel remembered Sheba McCoy regaling him with the story in bed one night, tracing the lines of various ancient symbols across his bare chest with a fingertip. He’d always had a thing for linguists, but never more so than that night.
“Go on.”
“That’s all I’ve got. As I recall, the text on the stone was nothing too interesting—something about taxes and putting statues in temples, wasn’t it?”
“Something like that. It was Ptolemy the Fifth and you were off by four years, but that’s better than most Americans could have done. Better than most Egyptians, for that matter. Do you recall how the Stone was found?”
Gabriel had a sudden sense of déjà vu. The old boy seemed to be turning up everywhere. “Napoleon’s army found it. Around 1800?”
“Seventeen ninety-nine. Bonaparte had led a campaign into Egypt in ’98. Having effectively conquered the country, he brought in scientists and archaeologists to rape us of our treasures in the name of ‘historical discovery.’ The Stone was found in Rashid—an area the French referred to as Rosetta at the time. The history books are sadly incomplete with regard to exactly what happened to the Stone over the next two years, after Napoleon returned to France, leaving his men here to continue their work.”
“Didn’t the British also invade Egypt around that time?” Gabriel asked.
“Yes. The British and the Ottomans. They decided to challenge the French, using my country as a battleground. The French took the Rosetta Stone to Alexandria along with numerous other bits of plunder, in an attempt to keep it all out of their enemies’ hands, but it didn’t work. The British prevailed, the French surrendered. The French commander, a man named de Menou, tried to keep the Rosetta Stone for himself as personal property. But that ended as you might expect.”
“With the Stone in the British Museum.”
“Precisely.”
“So what about this second tablet?”
Amun poured himself another glass of mint tea. “Are you sure you won’t have a drink, Mister Hunt? You know it is an insult to refuse hospitality from an Arab.”
“How do I know the tea’s not drugged?” Gabriel said.
“You don’t,” Amun said. “If I wish to drug you, Mister Hunt, you will be drugged. If I wish to kill you, you will be killed. Now drink your tea.”
Gabriel lifted the glass to his lips, sniffed, and took a sip.
“You see?” Amun said. “Not everything is a threat, my friend.”
“Let’s get one thing straight. We’re not friends.”
Amun shrugged. “Perhaps we will be once you have laid hands on the most important archaeological discovery in the history of the Western world.”
“Don’t bet on it,” Gabriel said.
“Mister Hunt. You can pretend all you like, you will not convince me that you are not curious.”
“Sure I’m curious. I’d have been more curious if you hadn’t kidnapped my sister.”
“Perhaps,” Amun said. “But you would have been less likely to turn the Stone over to us rather than to one of your museums once you’d found it.”
“How do you even know this second tablet exists? I’ve never heard about it.”
“Yes, well. That is in the nature of secrets: few people hear of them. And this one was kept very secret indeed.” Amun raised a hand to stop Gabriel from interrupting. “The Second Stone, as we have come to call it, was a good deal smaller than the first and buried quite a bit deeper in the ground. Napoleon’s brother Louis found it after the main excavation was completed. He unearthed it with the assistance of his private secretary and kept it for the emperor, as a gift. When Louis returned to France in 1799, he brought the Second Stone back with him. But he couldn’t restrain himself and described it to his brother in a private letter sent in advance by courier. We have that letter.”