“Here it is,” he said unceremoniously.
Mallus walked up to the machine and looked inside; the beautifully intricate red and black symbols can’t have been any more vivid the day they were inked. Patterson had done a superb job. “It’s beautiful,” he whispered. “Is it safe to touch?”
“No, it will never be safe to touch. The oils of your skin would cause lasting damage. It will also need to be kept inside a pressurised, acclimatised container to ensure that it doesn’t deteriorate. It will need to be kept out of direct sunlight.”
Mallus turned towards him and smiled. “I know what you are about to say, Dr Patterson. Henry,” he emphasised the more personal touch. “We’ve been working together now for almost five years and I’ve been waiting for this exact conversation, so trust me when I say you do not need to skirt around the subject.”
“It should remain here,” Patterson said frankly. “At your request, and thanks to your generous donations thus far, I have been able to keep this project relatively quiet. But I’m already coming under some pressure from my peers, those that I have had to involve, to secure this artefact for the Museum.”
Mallus shook his head. “I’m afraid that’s out of the question. I will be taking the document with me this evening, and a final donation to the Anthropology Department will be made in the morning. I’m quite prepared to make a personal donation to you, too.”
It was Patterson’s chance to shake his head.
“I won’t be bribed, Mallus.” It had taken considerable effort to setup the laboratory environment required to open the ancient papyrus, and he wasn’t about to give it up without a fight. Even more so considering the level of secrecy he had been forced to keep during the long years it had taken for the document to finally be laid bare. “This papyrus is perhaps one of the most finely preserved outside of Egypt, and it does not belong in your private collection.”
Mallus walked up and down the room before standing to face the nervous-looking scientist. “I’m going to be completely honest with you, Henry. You know this isn’t about the papyrus; it’s about where it leads. I want to start planning excavations in Egypt; dozens of people digging up the desert to find it. That’s the prize, and that’s what I’m interested in. Now, I’ve got a feeling that when they do find it, there’ll be a lot more work, and what we’ll be looking at then will be far more interesting than some ancient treasure map.”
“So this is all about money?”
Mallus looked down at the floor, for the first time in Patterson’s eyes looking lost for words. “No,” he said quietly. “No, I have a feeling there’s something more important here. Something that could change everything.”
Patterson looked at him with interest. “Like?”
He looked up, the confident businessman Mallus gone, replaced with an anxious Seth. “I just have a feeling,” he said. “We can work on this together, Henry. I’m not bribing you. Just let me take my papyrus back and I promise I’ll bring you something so big you’ll forget the damn thing ever existed in the first place.”
Chapter 4
Gail woke with a start.
What a strange dream, she thought. She had been standing on the top of a cliff overlooking a vast plain. Running through the middle of it was the river Nile. Suddenly, the ground had shaken beneath her and a huge glass tower erupted into the sunlight. Up, up it had risen until it must have touched the very edge of the atmosphere. Its base filled the plain, bridging the gap between the Nile and the cliff on which she had been standing.
The smooth walls of the tower had reflected the surrounding cliff-top and the rising sun behind her in perfect detail. It had however been unsettling that the only thing they didn’t reflect was her.
Awake now, she fancied she could still feel the humid air of the desert on her skin, and touching the sheets realised they were damp with sweat. She rubbed her eyes and checked her tablet sitting on the bedside table: three minutes to six. Barely dawn.
George lay sleeping beside her, his pyjama top was twisted round so that half the buttons were on his back. In her still-sleepy state she couldn’t quite work out how that was possible, so she decided to think it through while she went downstairs to the kitchen to get a glass of water.
On her way back she stopped in front of the video wall. It was certainly good fun to play with, and the novelty had not yet worn off. She picked up the remote from the coffee table and shook it. The wall came to life and she quickly pressed the mute button; the system came with an incredibly powerful speaker setup that Gail could not see a use for in her normal-size home. Unlike George whose exact words were “It’s like being at Wembley!” to which Gail had shouted “What did you say?”
She tilted the remote on its side, and an Internet browser appeared next to the news presenter. Her thumbprint on the remote automatically logged her in to her social feed, which came to life with pictures and videos from her friends and family. She focussed her attention on direct messages and emails.
The first was from Ellie. She had sent it barely half an hour earlier, and from the way it was written she must have been drunk. Gail almost laughed out loud as she realised about halfway down that Ellie obviously thought she was writing to her mother. Closing the message she scrolled down, ignoring several general emails from the University until she reached the previous day’s auto-reply message from Professor Mamdouh al-Misri of the Egyptian Museum of Cairo, regarding her application form. She sighed and scrolled back up to the top.
Rotating the remote lazily she refreshed the feed. It was only six in the morning, but you never knew who might be up sending funny things. Her heart missed a beat as she saw the new email appear: ‘RE: Tell el-Amarna dig.’ She quickly opened the message and read it, her eyes resting on the last line: ‘Look forward to seeing you soon! Mamdouh.’
Within seconds she was shaking George. “Honey! I got the place!” she screamed, her voice so high-pitched it was almost unintelligible. “We’re going to Amarna!”
George broke into a huge sleepy grin and tried to reach out to hug her. His twisted pyjama top stopped him from lifting his arms, and he spent several frantic seconds freeing himself from it. “Well done,” he said eventually. “I knew you would. Now all you have to do is write your research proposal.”
But she had already left the bedroom, and was taking the steps back down to the living room two by two. “I know,” she shouted back up the stairs. “I know!”
Chapter 5
The hot tarmac of the road gleamed in the late-afternoon sun as their car moved slowly south. The encroaching desert threw tentative fingers of light yellow sand across both carriageways from their right. In the distance, mostly hidden behind the low mounds of sand, the tops of a group of palm trees could just be seen, swaying gently in the light breeze.
Gail looked above the desert at the deep blue sky. It seemed almost alien to her, having arrived the previous evening from the cold and wet winter climate of England. On top of that, she could not remember the last sunny day in Southampton. One, perhaps two weeks of sunshine over the summer months, but the relentless clouds mostly won the battle for the skies of northern Europe. Here, it seemed the other way round; a small, cotton-like cloud, devoid of rain, glided slowly across the horizon to their left, but it was totally alone against the azure background.
For thousands of years, the Sahara desert had fought an ongoing battle with the fertile banks of the river Nile. In the time of the most ancient pharaohs, the Great Pyramid on the Giza plateau had overlooked a landscape of fields and palm groves, which had helped to feed a young and expanding kingdom. Every year, the Nile would spill over into the surrounding fields, bringing with it the necessary nutrients that made the area so welcoming to farmers and their animals. And every year, the sands of the desert would fight back. The incessant tug of war between the desert and the river meant that for a great deal of its length, only a narrow band of cultivated land separated the Nile from the sands.