‘Not very. How about you?’
‘Pushing out soon.’
‘To Egypt?’
‘For starters. And you?’
‘Same region, different zip code.’
‘How close?’
‘Real close.’
‘Good to know.’
Tyson took a long swig of beer before he spoke again. ‘Josh, I don’t know what you’re mixed up in, and the truth is I don’t want to know. No, actually, I take that back. I do want to know — but I respect you enough not to ask.’
McNutt nodded. ‘Same here.’
‘That being said, I don’t think you have a total grasp of the situation. I’m telling you: Egypt is rough. As bad as the deserts are, the cities might be worse.’
‘How so?’
‘Have you heard of the forty-niners?’
‘The football team?’
‘No, the actual forty-niners. The thousands of men and women who made their way to California in search of gold back in the eighteen hundreds.’
‘Yeah, but — where are you going with this?’
Tyson continued. ‘When the forty-niners came to California, they were at the mercy of those who came before them. What they found was that nearly everything required the payment of a toll. “You want to drink from my stream? That’ll be a nickel.” “You want to pass through my land? That’ll be a nickel.” Everywhere they looked, everything they did, they were being charged a fee.’
McNutt shook his head. ‘I’m still lost. How does any of this relate to me?’
‘That’s what the cities are like in Egypt. It doesn’t matter what you’re talking about — legal or illegal; black market, white market, or gray market — there’s always a fee. For everything. And if you don’t pay, they make you pay.’
McNutt raised his hand and ordered another round. He’d stay here all night if he had to, buying drink after drink until he knew everything about Egypt.
‘Who’s they?’ he asked.
Tyson explained. ‘When the government went to hell, criminals saw a golden opportunity and seized control of the cities. And it’s been like that ever since. “You want to build a refinery? Here’s the toll.” “You want to pave a new road? Here’s the toll.” Whoever controls the land sets the price of doing business in that particular neighborhood. And trust me, the fees are a lot more than a nickel.’
‘How entrenched are they?’
Tyson laughed. ‘They control everything in one way or another. Everything goes through them, or it doesn’t go at all. Commerce. Tourism. Industry. You name it, they run it. Just like the mob in Jersey.’
‘That bad, huh?’
He nodded. ‘That shit you mentioned earlier — the stuff you’re hoping to find? There better be a lot of it, because the withdrawal fees are going to cost you plenty.’
13
Garcia had already fulfilled his research duties for Cobb and had passed along the news about McNutt’s desertion. Beyond that, he didn’t have much to do.
To make himself useful, he approached Jasmine to see if she needed help. Of all the team members, he found her to be the least combative. And while he still preferred the company of computers to interactions with humans, he didn’t really mind spending time with Jasmine. Besides, he still had a lot of gaps to fill before he completely understood what they were looking for, and he knew she could help with that.
‘Are you getting the hang of the table?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ she replied. ‘So far I’ve been able to rearrange the images and overlap them as I see fit, but I can’t seem to figure out how to link the various layers.’ She reached out and gently pushed the corner of the hologram, sending a layer of the map spinning. ‘I can do that, but what if I wanted to spin the entire thing at once? What if I want it to act as one big piece, instead of several individual layers? Is that possible?’
‘Sure.’ Garcia tapped two adjacent points on two levels of the hologram and folded his hands together, interlocking his fingers as if he were about to pray. When he reached out and spun the lower level, the level above it now spun as well.
Jasmine shook her head as she duplicated the maneuver. ‘That’s so intuitive I should have thought of it myself.’ She linked a few more layers together just for practice. ‘What about notes? Is there a way to add notes to the map? That would make things a lot easier for me.’
Garcia extended two fingers and double-tapped on the display screen. ‘You can add notes, add color, drop pins, calculate distances, and a few other bells and whistles. The entire toolbar incorporates a voice recognition system. Just tap on a section of interest, speak your note, and the computer will do the rest.’
He motioned for her to try.
She nodded and tapped on a tall Roman column in the middle of a large park. Built in 297 AD, the column towered above the plaza. ‘Pompey’s Pillar.’
A second later, the computer displayed the words POMPEY’S PILLAR on the screen. Garcia tapped the window again and the words immediately appeared on the map directly above the point of interest.
‘Hector, that’s fantastic!’ She was so excited that she gave him a hug. ‘Seriously, I can’t thank you enough. This program will save me so much time.’
Garcia beamed with pride. ‘Glad I could help.’
Papineau — who had a habit of coming and going as he saw fit, always without explanation — reentered the room as their hug was ending. ‘Jasmine, what are you celebrating? Have you figured out where to start?’
‘Start?’ Garcia said. ‘I thought the map was going to tell us where to finish.’
Papineau laughed him off. ‘Unfortunately, no. It won’t be that easy. There’s no X that marks the spot. Instead, we must determine where to begin.’
‘I thought we knew that already. We’re going to start in Alexandria.’ He glanced at them for confirmation. ‘Right?’
‘Yes, but where?’
Garcia stared at the map. He saw miles of roads, hundreds of buildings, and countless acres of underground catacombs. Finding one tomb in all of that seemed unlikely at best. ‘Crap. This is going to be tougher than I thought: like trying to find a snowflake in an avalanche.’
‘Hector, snowflakes would be easy by comparison. This is going to be substantially more difficult.’
Jasmine shrugged. ‘Maybe, maybe not.’
Papineau lit up. ‘You found something?’
‘Nothing definitive, but…’ Her tone was far from confident, as if she was still trying to convince herself of the possibility. ‘Maybe.’
‘Well, don’t just stand there. Show us!’
Jasmine groaned, but did as she was told. She stripped away all of the more recent layers of the map, leaving only the oldest renditions. Then she enlarged the hologram, focusing on a depression in the center of the map. ‘I know it looks like a hole in the ground, but I’m intrigued by the label. It’s inscribed with the words “Donum Neptunus”.’
Classically educated, Papineau didn’t need a computer to translate the term. ‘It’s Latin. It means “The Gift of Neptune”. What do you make of it?’
She sat in the nearest chair and rubbed her eyes, still trying to work through the theory in her head. ‘There’s an ancient story that I’ve heard many times before in a wide variety of ways that mentions a sacred well in the bowels of Alexandria. According to legend, if you believe these types of things, the well was so magical that it played a major role in determining the fate of Egypt.’
‘A water well?’ Garcia asked. ‘How did it do that?’
She explained. ‘In 47 BC, Julius Caesar fought Ptolemy Theos Philopator for control of the city. There were two main battles. During the first, known as the Siege of Alexandria, Ptolemy’s men flooded Caesar’s freshwater reserves with seawater in an attempt to cause his surrender. To combat the sabotage, Caesar dug into the earth until he reached drinkable water. Caesar was then able to beat back Ptolemy’s forces and eventually defeat him during the Battle of the Nile.’