Jack activated his beam and shone it forward. He stifled a gasp, and tripped forward slightly. The head of Anubis was staring out from the side of the tunnel just ahead of him, the black ears upright and the snout defiant just as Hiebermeyer and Maria had first seen it the day before.
‘Behold your second treat.’ Hiebermeyer twisted back round after having placed the extractor fan just in front of him. ‘This is the key find I meant, the clincher for the superintendency. It’s exactly what they want. A spectacular find. You can see they’ve already widened the recess around the statue, ready for taking it out later today. It’ll be all over the front pages tomorrow morning. Cue closing up this tunnel. Permanently.’
‘Amazing.’ Jack was still awestruck by the image, and put his hand carefully on the snout. ‘They found one of these in King Tut’s tomb,’ he said to Costas.
‘At least that one was where it belonged, in Egypt,’ Hiebermeyer grumbled.
‘Greeter of the souls of the underworld, and protector of them on their journey,’ Maria said from behind. ‘Or so Maurice tells me.’
‘I don’t like the sound of that,’ Costas muttered. ‘I thought you said there were no bodies in here.’
Jack tilted his helmet up, and looked past the snout of Anubis to the darkness beyond. He felt as if the eighteenth century had now given way to a much older past, erupting through the walls like the head of Anubis. He also sensed the danger. A few metres beyond the statue was a temporary metal grille across the tunnel bearing the word PERICOLO and a large death’s-head symbol. Hiebermeyer unlocked the hatch through the grille and pushed the extractor fan inside. He clicked it on, and a red light began flashing, accompanied by a low electronic whirr.
‘That’s a good start,’ he said. ‘Believe it or not, the extension lead actually works. We’ve got electricity.’ He checked a digital readout on the back of the fan. ‘In about ten minutes this should have cleared the tunnel ahead as far as we got yesterday, to the point where it ends at another wall. When the light goes green we’ll take the fan forward until the sensor flashes red again.’ He glanced at Jack, and spoke quietly. ‘I could have had this running before you arrived, but I didn’t want to tempt anyone to sneak in. Your superintendency friend seems perfectly happy with Anubis. In fact she’s obsessed with it.’
‘That would figure,’ Jack said quietly. ‘Elizabeth was passionate about Egypt when I knew her. She was paid to study Roman archaeology, but she really wanted to follow in your footsteps, Maurice. I told her all about you. She swore she’d go there once she’d fulfilled her government contract. But something drew her back here. Family connections. Obligations. She only ever hinted at it, hated the whole thing. That’s what really baffles me. Why she’s still here.’
‘You seem to have known her well,’ Maria murmured.
‘Friends for a while. But not any more, it seems.’
Hiebermeyer pushed up his glasses. ‘The bottom line is, as far as they’re concerned, the investigation has got its result, and what we’re doing now is purely a sideshow, a recce, before the whole thing is deemed unsafe and sealed up again. At the moment, I’m happy to go along with that.’
‘How safe is it, exactly?’ Costas said.
‘Well, the tunnel isn’t shored up, and there’s the risk of another earth tremor. The place is full of toxic gas. Vesuvius might erupt again. We could be crushed, asphyxiated, incinerated.’
‘Archaeology,’ Costas sighed. ‘To think, I turned down a position at CalTech for all this. Beach house, surfing, martinis on tap.’
‘We could also be gunned down by the Mafia,’ Maria added.
‘Great. That’s just the icing on the cake.’ Costas sighed, then looked back at Anubis. ‘Anyway, I thought by the Roman period this Egyptian stuff was all passe,’ he said. ‘I mean, what you were saying about this guy Calpurnius Piso. The fashion accessories. Everything had to be Greek.’
‘The Warhol collector doesn’t necessarily throw away his family collection of Old Masters,’ Maria said.
‘Actually, ancient Egypt was the very latest rage,’ Jack said. ‘Egypt was the last of the big old places to be annexed by Rome, after the defeat of Cleopatra in 31 BC. Most of the obelisks you see in Rome today, the one in St Peter’s Square, were shipped over by the first emperors. It was just like the pillage of Greece all over again. Everyone wanted a piece of the action.’
‘Barbarians,’ Hiebermeyer muttered. At that moment the extractor fan flashed green and the fan cut out. He motioned for them to move forward, and crouched through the grille. Jack and Costas picked up the corrugated tube and followed him, with Maria close behind. Ahead of them the passageway was unlit except for the wavering beams of their headlamps. Jack had wondered when he would feel the claustrophobia, and it was now, the point in a tunnel when he suddenly felt removed from the world outside, when progress ahead seemed beyond his own volition, when the tunnel itself seemed to be drawing him in. It was as if the toxic air they were pressing against had bled around them and filled the tunnel behind, sealing them in a capsule that could implode at any moment, sucking them into the vortex of the past. They pressed on, pulling the tube noisily behind them. The tunnel was longer than he had expected, reaching deep into the recesses of the villa site, well beyond the tunnels he had seen on Weber’s plan. About thirty metres on they came to the end, to the dark crack in the wall where Maria and Hiebermeyer had stopped the day before. Jack could clearly see the pick marks from the eighteenth century, and he looked at them closely. Some of the marks were on stone, not solidified mud. The tunnel clearly ended at some kind of structure, a stone entranceway. Hiebermeyer heaved the fan inside the crack and activated it again. ‘It still shows green, but I’m going to give it five minutes anyway. Better safe than sorry.’ He looked at Jack. ‘This is as far as we got just before I came out and called you. After I looked inside.’
‘I can hardly wait.’ Jack turned and peered back down the corridor, where they could see a wavering electric light and hear voices, then the sound of a power tool being tested. ‘Will any of them join us?’
‘I doubt it,’ Hiebermeyer said. ‘They’re widening the passageway to get Anubis out. Even our lady guardian won’t come through that grille.’
‘Maybe they think the place is cursed,’ Costas murmured. ‘Maybe Anubis does it for them.’
‘If there was a curse, the authorities would let us know about it,’ Hiebermeyer said. ‘They’ve put every other obstacle in front of excavating this place. We’re part of their game. A token gesture, so they can say they’ve done everything they can do, but that the place is just too dangerous.’
As if on cue, there was a shudder and the air shimmered with dust. It was gone as quickly as it had arrived, but there was no doubting the cause. Hiebermeyer took out his seismic oscillator and pressed it against the side wall, then grunted. There was silence for a moment, then a quiet coughing from Maria, and they all clipped on their dust masks.
‘Maybe they’re right,’ Costas said. ‘Is there anything more to see, Maurice? I mean, anything really? I’m good to go.’
‘Too late to turn back now,’ Hiebermeyer said, peering at Jack. ‘I hate to admit it, but I’m beginning to understand those eighteenth-century tunnellers. I know where they were coming from. You don’t want to linger too long down here. I don’t think we’re here for a painstaking excavation. Not exactly smash and grab, but something like an archaeological raid.’