Answering these questions was what drove him here to Meroe and the lost tomb of the Queen of Sheba, and not to the mines Hank was after. Because if there was any place on Earth that Conrad might find one of the two Pillars of Creation, and all the hidden knowledge they represented, then surely it was right here, right now, behind this wall.
If he blew this wall open, however, he’d destroy any relief on the opposite side of the one he was staring at, possibly obliterating the very information he might need to unlock the rest of the tomb.
He reached into his pack again, pulled out his phone and slid into a slot what looked like a special memory card. A thermal-like image of red and yellow splotches filled a green screen. This was his pocket imaging radar originally developed by DARPA and modified by MIT researchers for Special Forces to locate underground cave hideouts for terrorists or weapons of mass destruction.
He aimed the radar at the Queen of Sheba on the wall, and a moment later he heard a ping. The imaging indeed revealed another chamber on the other side, rectangular in size. He could feel his heart pounding now. He was so close. But he had to have a look before he blew the wall.
Once again he reached into his pack, this time taking out his pocket microwave drill. Developed by the Israelis, the needle-thin drill bit emitted intense microwaves that Conrad now used to bore a small hole through the wall. The microwaves softened the rock enough for the glowing bit to push all the way through.
Conrad then snaked a fiber-optic line through the hole and watched the screen on his phone. The hair-thin cable emitted its own light and gave him a view inside the chamber on the other side.
What he saw looked like the antechamber of a true Egyptian tomb like King Tut’s, something that would predate by centuries anything else here built by the Nubians. There was an alabaster statuette of the goddess Isis to the far right of the room. She was wearing some kind of black amulet around her green neck and was most likely guarding the burial and treasure chambers beyond the antechamber.
So close and yet so far.
Conrad pulled out his fiber-optic camera and paused before the great wall relief in front of him, staring at the Queen of Sheba on her throne, standing in his way.
Sorry, babe.
He snapped a few pictures of the relief while it was still in one piece, then slapped on some primasheet. He stuck in a ten-second timer, held his breath and blew the wall open.
He waited only a few seconds for the dust to settle before making his way into the antechamber.
The rectangular room was bigger than he expected, as was the statue of Isis at the far end. The fiery-black medallion around her neck seemed to glow as he approached. He discovered the effect came from several cutouts in the mysterious metal that were filled with gemstones. He felt a tingling in his fingers as he rubbed them against the surface of the metal. It was almost…electric.
The engraved symbol was of an Egyptian pyramid with sun rays shooting out. In some ways it resembled a few of the Masonic symbols and the reverse seal of the United States, although it obviously predated them all.
As for the several hieroglyphic characters, he couldn’t make heads or tails of them and didn’t have time to. He carefully lifted the medallion and its gold chain off the statue of Isis and put it around his own neck.
He had to break through the next wall into the burial and treasury chambers. If the remains of the Queen of Sheba — and the Pillars of Creation — were anywhere, they would be there.
He didn’t bother to drill a hole and run a fiber cam through to the other side. At this point it didn’t matter. Nothing was going to stop him from blasting his way through.
Conrad reached for more primasheet and heard a footfall from behind. He spun around and saw what looked like a mummy at the other end of the antechamber. And it was moving toward him.
No, it was a figure in a burka. A woman. The Queen of Sheba come to life.
“Whoah!” he heard himself shout, backing up against the statue of Isis and reaching for the Glock pistol tucked behind in his waistband. He whipped it out and pointed it at the woman. “Stop!”
The figure actually stopped, the headwrap came off to reveal the impossibly beautiful face of an angel, and Conrad found himself staring at none other than Serena Serghetti.
CHAPTER 6
Jungle rains put a crimp in the “Nomad” pilot shoot for weeks. It was already January 27, 2013, and no wrap was in sight for Hank Johnson. There were fewer visitors now, and fewer pings on the virtual tripwires around camp. Even tourism director Garamba’s local security guys showed up less often.
The rains, however, did offer him some breathing room. Now he could concentrate on his research. Inside his trailer, Hank listened to the drops drum on the roof and reviewed his Google+ social media streams for crowd-sourced intel about the Queen of Sheba’s mines.
His G+ leaks had paid off big time. People who thought they were playing a game in Ingress were a lot more useful than constipated academics or rung-climbing analysts who were afraid to embarrass themselves. The posts created supercharged collective thinking. One woman named “Linda B” had put everything together in a single post. She thought that the Queen of Sheba went to King Solomon for advice.
Why Solomon?
Solomon was known for his wisdom, but he was also known for his wealth. Jerusalem sat at the end of a trade route that would much later be known as the Silk Road. It was a center of trade. Solomon was the richest as well as the wisest man in the world, and in his Proverbs implied the two were related through some metaphysical alchemy.
Which could explain the mythological object known as the “Philosopher’s Stone,” which could turn lead into gold.
The philosopher’s stone wasn’t a rock. It was a ruse.
Hank instantly considered the concept of banking — what the ancients called hawala. Solomon’s “wisdom” for the Queen of Sheba was how she could “multiply” her gold by leaving it with him, like many other nations probably did. The Royal Bank of Solomon probably functioned as a safe money laundry between the Egyptian kleptocracy and the vicious Assyrians — charging interest on all the gold and being paid in gold!
What could be more magical in the Queen of Sheba’s time than multiplying gold? That had to be the business she conducted with Solomon in his Temple in Jerusalem.
And yet, Hank knew there was more to this alchemy than financial witchcraft. After all, if the Temple Mount wasn’t the mother of all XM deposits, and if the Ark wasn’t some kind of power cube device, then what on Earth was?
Exotic matter had to be behind the alchemy.
Hank now suspected that XM was the invisible link between the Queen of Sheba and King Solomon, the secret behind his gold and her mines.
In short, a portal. A very special portal. Right here, nearby.
The ultimate question was who or what exactly was on the other side of this portal, generating this “ordered data” in XM. Not one bone in Hank’s body believed these so-called “Shapers” were angelic beings, let alone gods. They were, however, entities with an agenda.
Whether it was for good or evil remained to be seen. But if the Shapers had wanted to destroy humanity, they could easily induce humans to destroy themselves. So far, however, he hadn’t noticed any violent intentions from the Shapers.
The only thing anybody knows is that the Shapers want something from people, and that nobody knows what it is.
Hank decided to give his G+ streams and endless speculations a rest and turn his attention to his private communications from Calvin at Niantic. Several emails in, however, he could sense between the lines that something was wrong.