Eddie nudged Nina. ‘I said you wouldn’t like him when he’s angry.’
She held up her hands to the scowling Banna. ‘Okay, don’t know what I’ve done to make you so mad, but we seem to have gotten off on the wrong foot. Is there a problem?’
‘Oh no, there is no problem at all!’ he said, shrugging as his sarcasm threatened to break the top of the scale. ‘You think I am some intern, some child, because I am young, but there is nothing wrong with that. Nor is there anything wrong with the IHA taking control of an Egyptian dig, and there is especially nothing wrong with you coming here to feast on the publicity of opening the tomb like some desert vulture!’
‘All right, mate, that’s enough,’ said Eddie, stepping forward.
Banna gave him a dismissive glare. ‘Who are you?’
‘I’m her husband. And I’m also the bloke who’s going to pop you in the face if you’re rude to my wife again.’
‘I do hope that won’t be necessary, Mr Chase,’ came a booming voice from behind Banna. Dr Ismail Assad, wearing dust-caked overalls, stepped into view. ‘Ubayy is simply full of the fires of youth.’
Banna fumed, but under the level gaze of the country’s chief archaeologist decided to say nothing more… for the moment. ‘Dr Assad,’ Nina said, stepping around Banna to greet him. ‘It’s great to see you again.’
‘And you too, Dr Wilde. Mr Chase as well — I last saw you in Switzerland, I believe? That was an exciting night.’ His smile widened, a twinkle appearing in his eye as he saw Macy. ‘And Miss Sharif, welcome back. The discoverer of the Pyramid of Osiris returns to the land of her ancestors!’
‘Co-discoverer,’ Nina pointed out. Macy jokingly made a face at her.
Banna spoke sharply in Arabic to Assad, then said to Nina: ‘This is exactly what I mean! When you are around, no one else is allowed credit. You are like a black hole, except all the light you pull in comes from camera flashes.’
By now, Nina had recovered from her initial startlement. ‘Hey, you listen, Doogie Howser,’ she said, jabbing a finger at him. ‘I don’t know where you’ve got this idea that I’m some sort of insane publicity hog, but point one: the Egyptian government asked the IHA to assist on the dig; it didn’t barge in and take over. And point two: I don’t even work for the IHA any more! I’m here entirely as a favour, again by request of the Egyptian government. And frankly, right now I’m not in a frame of mind to take crap from anybody. Okay?’
Banna bristled, but Assad intervened smoothly before he could reply. ‘Perhaps we should go and meet Dr Schofield, hmm? You can see the final preparations for the opening of the tomb tomorrow.’
‘Yeah, I think that’d be a good idea,’ said Eddie.
Macy sidled up to him. ‘Whoa. She gets scary when she’s pissed at someone,’ she whispered.
‘Don’t I bloody know it,’ he replied.
‘What was that?’ Nina demanded, eyeing the pair.
‘Nothing,’ Eddie said with an innocent face.
Deyab stayed behind as Assad gestured for the others to come with him, heading for an opening in one corner. ‘This room is the antechamber,’ he began, his voice becoming oratorical. ‘Visitors would enter here to pay homage to Alexander. The most important visitors, or those who brought sufficient tribute, would be permitted to go through to the treasury and the burial chamber beyond, to see the body of the king in person.’ He gestured at the floor as they descended another set of stone steps. ‘Emperors and pharaohs have trodden these very stairs.’
‘Not for a long time, though,’ said Nina.
‘No indeed. We believe the tomb has been sealed since around 40 °CE. There is evidence that a structure was built to mark its original entrance — which we have not yet located, as the tunnel to it is blocked. That would explain how Al-Masudi and other scholars of the Middle Ages could claim to have seen it, but until now, nobody has entered the tomb itself for at least sixteen centuries.’
‘No wonder the place needs a bit of dusting,’ said Eddie.
They reached the bottom of the stairs and continued along a passage, rounding several corners before seeing bright spotlights illuminating a large metal door. A small group of people stood at the obstruction. ‘You know Bill, of course,’ the Egyptian said to Nina as they reached them.
‘Yeah, I might have met him somewhere before,’ she replied with a wry smile as she shook the hand of Dr William Schofield. Her former colleague was now on the shortlist of candidates to take her place as the permanent director of the IHA.
‘Can’t think where,’ Schofield said with a grin of his own. ‘Nina, hi. Good to see you again — although having heard what happened to you in LA, I’m sorry about the circumstances.’
Assad completed the introductions. ‘And this is Dr Youssef Habib, my associate from the Ministry, and Dr Dina Rashad.’ He gestured to a pair of Egyptians, the former a doleful middle-aged man, the latter a plump woman in her thirties with a brightly patterned headscarf over her long black hair.
Nina recognised her name. ‘Did you write a paper on the tomb of Queen Hetepheres a year or two ago?’ she asked.
Dina smiled, blushing slightly. ‘Yes, I did. Thank you! I am honoured that you would remember it, Dr Wilde.’
‘It was a very thought-provoking paper. I always remember things that interest me.’
Eddie smirked. ‘You written anything Nina’d remember?’ he asked Banna.
‘Eddie,’ Nina chided.
Banna scowled. ‘I have written three very highly regarded papers, as a matter of fact. My monograph on the founding of Alexandria is the reason I was put in charge of this dig.’
‘He is very good,’ said Assad, adding with a tiny smile, ‘for a man so young. Now,’ he went on, before Banna could complain, ‘will this door be opened tomorrow?’
‘I think so,’ said Schofield. ‘We’ve finished checking the lock with the fibre optics.’ He nodded towards a laptop and endoscopic camera on a bench.
‘The lock is a simple latch,’ Dina added. ‘Once we release it, we should be able to pull the door open.’
Assad nodded. ‘Good, good. So what do you think, Dr Wilde?’
‘Very impressive — and very exciting,’ she said, examining the door more closely. As in the outer passage, reliefs had been worked into its surface. The figure of Alexander was at the centre, standing tall above the supplicants around him. ‘It’ll be an incredible find.’
‘As long as nobody tries to take it from us,’ the Egyptian said with dark humour.
‘Anyone trying to break in here’d have a job,’ said Eddie. ‘The only way in or out’s down that long corridor, and you’ve got, what, a couple of dozen blokes with guns at the top?’
‘That many — that you can see,’ said Assad. ‘The whole street was being watched, even before this new threat. The ASPS guard the tomb, inside and out, twenty-four hours a day.’
Habib spoke up. ‘This threat, I cannot believe it is serious. You would need an army to break in here! We are worrying about nothing.’
‘It was serious enough for a man to kill someone to stop them from telling me about it,’ said Nina. ‘And serious enough for them to try to kill me, even though I’m not even with the IHA any more.’
‘Perhaps they did not know that,’ suggested Dina. ‘I did not know you had left until Dr Assad told me.’
Banna faced Nina, radiating both disdain and scepticism. ‘Dr Assad also told me what these raiders are supposedly trying to steal. A statue of Bucephalus?’