Hiebermeyer peered up at him. “Well, Jack, you have been out of the loop. You’ve been incognito in the Gulf of Suez for the last four days, with instructions that nobody from IMU should try to make contact. The board of directors decided to bypass you and authorize the Seaquest team to raise the sarcophagus in your absence. It was a way of deflecting attention from everything that’s going on in Egypt, from the possibility that the antiquities people here might rumble your diving escapade and create a huge stink. Better to get the sarcophagus in the public eye before anything like that happened, and to make a huge splash in the media: Taken from the pyramids at Giza in the 1830s, lost in a shipwreck on the way to the British Museum, recovered by IMU. The board went public about the discovery yesterday, and there are now a dozen reporters and film crews on board waiting for the recovery. The press release has even included your promise that if the protection of the sarcophagus can be guaranteed by the Egyptian authorities and overseen by a UNESCO monitoring team, then it goes back to the pyramid. That’s what we all agreed upon from the get-go.”
Costas snorted. “From the look of what’s going on here, it’s more likely to be hacked to pieces by the extremists.”
“The new antiquities director is aware of that,” Hiebermeyer said. “He may be a political stooge who cares nothing for archaeology for its own sake, but he’s also a pompous egotist who would like nothing better than to be associated with the return of the sarcophagus. He’s been in the job for only six months, but he’s shutting down foreign excavations across Egypt to keep his xenophobic masters in the new regime happy. But at the same time he’s resisting the extremists, who want a repeat of the Taliban nightmare in Afghanistan, the desecration of anything they perceive to be non-Islamic. If the extremists get their way, he knows he’ll be out of a job and just as dispensable as the monuments that are supposedly in his care.”
“It sounds like a losing battle,” Costas said.
Hiebermeyer looked at them grimly. “With the press release the board of directors has been buying us time, dangling a carrot in front of the antiquities director, which results in our own projects in Egypt remaining off the hit list for the time being. We have to pray that the current director remains in power long enough for us to complete our main excavation at the mummy necropolis.”
“And that scenario could crumble to dust at any time,” Costas muttered. “Someone from the extremist faction holds a knife to his throat, or the expected coup takes place and the extremists oust the moderates. Then Egypt winds back to year zero and archaeology goes to hell in a handbasket.”
“I couldn’t have put it better myself,” Hiebermeyer said.
“Were you in on the decision-making about the sarcophagus?” Jack asked him. “Did the board consult you?”
“From the very outset,” Hiebermeyer said. “They weren’t going to go public without my approval.”
Jack took a deep breath. “Okay. You did the right thing. You’d think by now I’d have learned to let IMU sail on without my hand always at the helm, but sometimes it throws me. Now, where’s Lanowski? If the Seaquest team is on hold with the sarcophagus and I can hitch a lift back with him after visiting Cairo, I might even get a look-see at the raising after all.”
Hiebermeyer gestured with his thumb. “Down the corridor. He’s set up his simulation computer in my office.”
“What on earth is he doing with that?” Jack said.
Hiebermeyer gave a tired smile. “You know Lanowski. He says that when his feet hit Egyptian soil, he gets so wired that he can fly through the past and see every detail as if it’s laid out in front of him. I told him what you and Costas have been up to in the Gulf of Suez. I’ve never seen anyone so hyped. He’s simulating the Bible.”
Costas coughed. “Say again?”
“Simulating the Bible.”
“Simulating the Bible,” Costas repeated, shaking his head. “Isn’t that flying a little close to the sun? You know, the big guy in the sky?”
“That’s Lanowski for you,” Hiebermeyer said. “Boundaries are there to be crossed.”
“God help us,” Costas muttered.
Aysha stood up, glancing at her watch. “No more than an hour. Maria’s expecting you in the Old City of Cairo at 1900 hours.”
“Maria,” Jack exclaimed. “So that’s who you mean about people working behind the scenes. What’s she doing here?”
“I was going to mention it before we left, of course,” Aysha said. “Remember, she’s director of the Institute of Paleography at Oxford. Who better to study a new document from the Cairo Geniza?”
“And Jeremy too?”
She shook her head. “He’s just been appointed assistant director, so he holds the fort while she’s gone. Anyway, he’s in London at the British Museum doing some other research for this project that you don’t yet know about.”
Jack put up his hands. “I surrender. It sounds as if my world really has spun out of my control.”
Costas slapped him on the shoulder. “It’s what friends are all about, Jack. Sometimes you just can’t manage it all on your own.”
Jack stood up and put his hands on his hips. “All right. Lanowski first, then Cairo. And then we’ll see what happens. We could be back to Seaquest for another dive to a thousand meters in a submersible.”
“I’m good with that,” Costas enthused. “Very good.”
Aysha checked her phone. “I’m going ahead to Cairo. Before you think of planning ahead, wait until you see what Maria and I have to show you. Your quest for Akhenaten’s City of Light might not be over just yet, inshallah.”
Jack glanced at Costas. “Let’s move.”
“Roger that.”
CHAPTER 9
Jack and Costas made their way along the lower floor of the institute to the director’s office, its door slightly ajar. Hiebermeyer preferred the workroom where they had met him, so he usually lent his office to a visiting scholar, and there was one in there now. Costas had wanted to capture an image of Lanowski hard at work for the IMU Facebook page, and had his phone at the ready as he gently pushed the door open.
Lanowski was occupying Hiebermeyer’s desk. More accurately, he was perched on it, legs crossed, arms resting on his knees in the lotus position, eyes tightly shut, humming to himself and occasionally uttering a surprised chortle, as if in a state of constant revelation.
Costas took a picture. “Look, Jack,” he whispered. “He’s gone archaeologist.”
“What do you mean?”
“Ever since we let him take these little sabbaticals out of the lab, he’s tried to become one of us. Check out the boots and shorts. He’s copying Maurice. Sweet, isn’t it?”
Jack scratched his chin, trying to keep a straight face. “Doesn’t really work, does it?” He stared at Lanowski, at the long, lank hair hanging over the little round glasses, the mouth in a half smile of apparently joyous discovery, seemingly oblivious to them. Lanowski had looked exactly the same since they had poached him twelve years earlier from MIT to help Costas develop strengthened polymer materials for submersibles casings. Since then he had become IMU’s all-round genius, with a particular knack for computer-generated imagery, or CGI. He was here because a childhood fascination with the mathematics and geometry of ancient Egypt had led him to work closely with Hiebermeyer, a relationship that Jack had been happy to foster and that seemed all the more precious now that the institute was threatened with imminent closure.