But what bothered him most was how the irony of it all was lost on his critics: They would have nothing to complain about without the archaeological treasures he left behind for them.
This area of the Nile valley known as Nubia was home to three Kushite kingdoms during antiquity, the last of which was centered in the “Island of Meroe.” It was debatable as to whether or not it actually was an island in the Nile at some point, or whether it appeared that way due to its unique position between the Nile and two other rivers. It had been a thriving city of 25,000 with a great Temple of Isis, a rich gold and iron trade with India and China, and enough wealth and power to rival its northern neighbor Egypt in the ancient world.
The real mystery was where the people of Meroe came from, and why they vanished from history.
Nobody knew.
All that remained of the once-great civilization were the 200-plus Nubian pyramids Conrad could now see rising along the east banks of the Nile like black heaps of rubble against the starry night.
The sandstone block pyramids were much smaller and more sharply angled than those built in Egypt 800 years earlier. Many stood at only half their height thanks to the notorious 19th-century Italian explorer Giuseppe Ferlini who smashed the tops off 40 of them in a quest to find treasure. Despite a haul of some notable jewelry from one of the queen pyramids, however, Ferlini discovered that the graves had already been plundered in ancient times and left to the elements.
Conrad had set off from Sudan’s capital of Khartoum as soon as his plane landed, not stopping to pick up a visitors permit for the pyramids from the Antiquities Service, but drove the whole day, the road following the railway line along the Nile, until he reached the town of Shendi, where he had turned off toward the pyramid fields.
Now at last he arrived at the gate with only his bogus ID from the German Archaeological Institute.
“Entrance fee,” he told the gatekeeper in German, flashing some euros.
The gatekeeper took the money and said, “No cafes, no toilets.”
Conrad nodded. The infrastructure was poor because tourists were in short supply here in Sudan compared to the big pyramids in Egypt. Visitors rarely topped 30 a day, if anyone bothered to show up at all.
Which was exactly what he was counting on tonight.
“I have my own food and drink, and plastic bags,” Conrad told him in Arabic with a made-up German accent.
“You should have the place to yourself,” the gatekeeper said and waved him through.
CHAPTER 4
After a few days of collecting crew and gear at the site, the City of Sheba set was almost finished. It looked just the way it was supposed to: convincing and interesting to the average viewer and absolutely bogus to the scholar and analyst. Hank Johnson had learned years before that the best way to conceal any truth was to make it appear fake. The ancients were masters of deceit.
Hank glanced over the script again in his trailer. It was exactly what he wanted. Pure reality show fare. The beginning was him presenting a theory. The middle was him “looking for the site”—drone shots mostly, along with some machete stuff through bushes. Some dark caves. A couple brushes with death. Shots of any weird creatures he’d found. Then, at the end of the first act, he would “discover” something. And no recaps. He hated the reality show recaps.
Hank stepped out of his trailer and onto the set and smiled.
Everything was in place. Now, to find the holy grail of adventure archaeology since H. Rider Haggard speculated on it in his novel King Solomon’s Mines:
The legendary mines of the Queen of Sheba.
“We’re 500 miles from any other known stone structures of similar size and intricacy, yet there does not seem to be any evidence of a nearby civilization.”
As he spoke Hank looked into the lens of a Sony PDW 530 news broadcast video camera. His camera assistant Dow Scott posed in front of some overgrown, fiberglass “stone” ruins. The red light of the camera signaled they were recording.
“In short, somebody came out here in the middle of nowhere, built a wonder of the world and then vanished. Why? But before we get to that, let me tell you about how I found this, because it’s nearly as fascinating a story as the dig itself.”
Hank paused. He’d scripted out an entire section on how he’d used the top-secret equipment at CERN to reverse trace the dispersion pattern of an exotic matter eruption. In a process that is just as much art as science, or instinct as intellect, he had located ancient drifting XM clusters outside the solar system, but inside the range of spysats and other devices. It wasn’t, in and of itself, classified information, but it was certainly information gained through classified means and using secret technology in an unusual way.
Dow looked up from the camera. “Should I keep rolling?”
“Uh, fine.”
Now that he and the crew had arrived on site deep inside the jungle, it was only a matter of time before other parties showed up too — most of them probably armed and willing to slay any and all who got in their way to treasure. Something like 5 million people had already died over gold in the Congo, so a few more was so much spare change to militants and mercenaries. In the 19th century, he might have weeks on them. Here in the 21st century he had hours. That was why he had gone to such great lengths with this bogus TV charade to dupe the competition into thinking nothing was here.
Except maybe monsters.
While he could laugh at poor Garamba’s superstitions, he did harbor his own suspicions about unseen threats. Exotic matter portals — even the old, weak ones, or maybe especially the old, weak ones — not only drew artists, scientists and shamans of different stripes, but they also drew guardians, predators and vultures. As he had discovered in Afghanistan, XM portals have their own ecologies, and they are sometimes extremely dangerous.
So far this morning he’d counted two sets of eyes in the lushly vegetated hills surrounding him, and maybe three.
One was Rosier, the agent attached to Niantic project security who had been sent to shadow him — a little spying, a little protection. Hank could give the noob the slip any time he wanted, and the sad thing was that Rosier knew it. Hank was going to have to ditch him, but he’d make it look good. Didn’t want to hurt the kid’s career. Didn’t want to piss off the kid’s boss either. There weren’t a lot of people whom Hank feared, but Niantic’s security chief J. “call me Jay” Phillips was one of them. Phillips was steely, crisp and missing at least one screw, maybe more. Messing with Phillips could get you dead.
His second audience consisted of a pair of local “security agents.” Friends or more likely relatives of Garamba. Hank couldn’t figure out whether they were utterly incompetent, or they wanted him to know he was being watched.
Now there was a third audience. At least he thought there was. That’s what made him nervous. He couldn’t tell. He had to figure it out before he located any portal here.
“Hey, throw up a scrim, Michaels!” he called out to his second assistant.
He wanted it up there partly to block the sun, and partly to block the view from his third observer, forcing him to move to a better vantage point. He watched in a mirror. He saw something move. He’d confirmed somebody was watching, he just didn’t know who it was.
“OK, I want to get two takes. One is for the teaser and one is for the show itself,” he said, keeping up the charade and keeping his eyes open. “Is this structure behind me part of the legendary kingdom of the Queen of Sheba, or is it the remnant of some long-lost civilization we know nothing about? And if this is the kingdom of the Queen of Sheba, why here in the Congo and not Ethiopia or Zimbabwe like so many have claimed? The curious thing about this site is that it seems to stand as alone in history as it does in the heart of Africa.”