‘Er, yeah,’ said Macy bashfully as she fingered her own tied-back hair. ‘I, ah, kinda borrowed your look. I thought if it worked for you . . . Hope you don’t mind.’
‘No, not at all,’ Nina said, the glow moving to her cheeks in slight embarrassment.
Joey returned and delivered a cappuccino, then sat at a table near the door. ‘See, when I read this,’ Macy continued, ‘it made me realise that wow, there really is all this amazing stuff still out there to discover.’ She tapped Nina’s picture. ‘And when I saw it was you who’d found it, it was like, oh my God! I mean, most archaeologists are guys, right, and they’re usually pretty old, but you? You were like a real-life Lara Croft. I thought, well, if you could do this, I could do it too!’
Nina knew the younger woman had meant it as a compliment, but wasn’t thrilled by her phrasing. ‘So . . . you weren’t sure what you wanted to do until then? You weren’t serious about archaeology?’
Macy shrugged. ‘The big, exciting stuff, sure. And I was already into Egyptology ’cause of my grandparents - they were from Egypt originally. My grandpa used to be a teacher, and he taught me to read hieroglyphics when I was a kid, which was pretty cool. But most of my first year, I kind of goofed off. I was in a sorority, I was a cheerleader, every night was party night - you know what it’s like!’
‘Hmm,’ said Nina, who at university had been anything but a party animal.
‘But then I almost flunked out, and that was when I realised I needed to pull myself together. Part of it was because I didn’t want to let down my mom and dad - I mean, they were paying for it! So I started working harder, and picked up my grades. But then when I heard about the IHA dig at the Sphinx, I realised it would be such a huge boost for me if I could be a part of it. So I managed to get on the team—’
‘There must have been a lot of competition.’
‘Oh, totally. But my mom does a lot of fundraising for international charities and she’s got friends at the UN, so that helped!’ She smiled brightly.
‘I’m sure it did,’ said Nina, unimpressed that nepotism, not hard work, had won her a place on the dig. While she didn’t consider herself the kind of person who made snap judgements, she was forced to admit that her initial appraisal of Macy - a party girl who relied on her looks and money to coast through life - seemed accurate. ‘Well, look, it’s been nice meeting you, and I’m glad I was such an inspiration, but I need to get moving.’
Macy’s face fell. ‘Oh, no, wait! Please, wait - I need to show you this.’ She hurriedly stuffed the pages back in her bag, her hand returning with a digital camera. ‘You know about the scrolls that told us how to find the Hall of Records, right?’
‘The ones that were found in Gaza? Yeah. I still keep up with the news.’
Macy didn’t register the sarcasm. ‘Okay, well, the Osirian Temple gave three pages to the IHA, right? Turns out they didn’t give us all of them.’
An image appeared on the screen. Nina looked more closely, seeing what appeared to be ancient Egyptian papyruses, though the hieroglyphics were too small to read on the LCD display. ‘Are these the pages?’
Macy pointed at the three leftmost pages. ‘These three are. But this one,’ she tapped the one on the right, ‘is something nobody’s seen before. Not at the IHA, anyway. The first three pages talk about what the Hall of Records is and how to find it. This one says what’s actually in it.’
Nina regarded her dubiously. ‘And what is in it?’
‘A map that tells you how to find the Pyramid of Osiris.’
‘What?’ Only the memory of having been at the other end of a similar discussion, trying to convince others of the truth of a legend, stopped Nina from letting out a dismissive laugh. ‘The Pyramid of Osiris? That’s barely even a myth - it’s more like a fairy tale. You could count all the references to it in known ancient Egyptian texts on one hand, and even then it’s only mentioned in connection with the mythology of their gods. It’s not real.’
‘Well, I didn’t think so either,’ said Macy, bristling, ‘but somebody does. Somebody who’s going to dig into the Hall of Records before the IHA and steal the map.’
Now Nina did laugh. ‘You’ve got to be kidding me. Someone’s digging under the Sphinx at the same time as the IHA? In the middle of the busiest tourist attraction in the entire country, and nobody notices?’
‘It’s true!’ Macy protested. ‘They’ve dug a shaft at the north end of the Sphinx compound - I saw it!’ She flicked through the images on the camera. ‘I took a picture of the plans, look!’
Nina gave it only a cursory glance. ‘There’s no way they could do that without attracting attention. They’d be arrested the moment they stuck their shovel into the ground.’
‘No, the people in charge, they’re in on it! Gamal, the head of security, and Dr Hamdi - look, see?’ Another picture, this one a blown-out closeup of a man’s startled face. ‘They’re both working for a guy from the Osirian Temple!’
Nina kneaded her forehead. ‘Why are you telling me this? If you really did uncover some conspiracy to rob the site, why didn’t you just tell Dr Berkeley? Or the Egyptian police?’
‘I didn’t know who I could trust. Dr Berkeley might have been in on it too.’
‘Logan Berkeley’s many things,’ said Nina drily, ‘but I don’t think he’s a crook.’
‘He didn’t believe me, anyway. He already had some problem with me, I don’t know why. He’s kind of a jerk.’
Nina couldn’t help a sardonic smile; that was certainly one of the ‘many things’. ‘The police, then. The Egyptians take artefact theft very seriously.’
‘I couldn’t go to the police.’
‘Why not?’
‘They kinda . . . wanted to arrest me. They think I stole a piece of the Sphinx and hit Dr Hamdi.’
‘What?’
‘I didn’t!’ Macy reconsidered that. ‘Okay, I did hit Dr Hamdi . . .’
Nina stood. ‘I think I’ve heard enough.’
‘No, wait, please!’ Macy jumped up; across the room, Joey half rose, watching Nina suspiciously. ‘Look, they chased me, they were going to kill me! I had to get out of Egypt.’
‘So why come to me? Why didn’t you tell the IHA?’
‘Because they wouldn’t listen; they thought I was a thief. I came to you because . . .’ Her expression crumbled to downcast disappointment. ‘Because I really thought you’d believe me.’
Despite herself, Nina felt a pang of sympathy for the young woman. Whether she was paranoid or just the victim of a hyperactive imagination, Macy had still gone through a lot to meet her ‘hero’ - only for the meeting to fall short of her hopes. ‘Look,’ she said, more quietly, ‘right now I don’t exactly have the highest opinion of the IHA, but that doesn’t mean they won’t listen to you. Okay? There aren’t bad guys hiding round every corner - you can go to them and tell them your side of the story.’
‘I . . . suppose,’ said Macy unhappily.
‘You don’t have to do anything right now.’ Nina glanced at Joey, who had relaxed. ‘Go home with your friend, sleep on it, then call the IHA in the morning. I promise, it’ll be okay.’