be the moment."
He looked back at the RPD. Salim was watching him, waiting for his
signal. Mek looked back down the slope.
ly "he thought. "Their line is bunching. "The big one es, on the left is
already out of position. Those two inside him are angling across towards
the gap." Nogo's men's camouflage blended perfectly with the of their
weapons were wrapped with scrub, and the barrels rags and scraps of
camouflage netting so that they threw no sunlight reflections. They were
almost invisible in the bush;
it was only their movements and the skin tones that se now that Mek
caught betrayed them. They were soCIO
of one of their eyeballs but he still the occasional gleam could not
pick out their machine gunner.
He must silence the gun with his first burst. "Ah, Yes," he thought with
relief. "There he is. On the right flank. I nearly missed him."
eavy shoulders The man was short and thick-set, with ily on his hip.
carrying the gun eas and long arms, simian, from it was a Soviet-made
7.62mm RPD. The wink of brass ed over those the cartridges in the
ammunition belts festoor, great shoulders had given him away.
Mek eased himself down and inched around the base He slipped the
rate-of-fire ered him.
of the rock that cov cheek on the selector on his AKM to rapid, and laid
hi wooden butt. it was his personal weapon. A gunsmith in barrel for
him, action and lapped the Addis had trued the stock. All this as well
as glass-bedding the barrel into the rove the accuracy of this
notoriously had been done to imp inaccurate assault rifle- It was still
no sniper's weapon, but ct to place all his with these modifications he
could expe shots within a two-inch circle at a hundred metres.
The man carrying the RPD up the slope was now only fifty metres below
where he lay. Mek glanced to his right to the to make sure that the
three others were moving in gap where Salim could take them out with a
single burst;
sight in the entre of the then he settled the pip of his fore
using his belt buckle as an RPD machine gunner's belly, aiming mark, and
fired a tap of three The AKM rode up viciously and the triple detonation
stung his eardrums, but Mek saw his bullets strike, stitching a row up
the man's torso. One hit low in the belly, the second in the diaphragm
and the third at the base of his throat. He spun around, his arms
flinging out and jerking, and then crashed over backwards, out of sight
in the underbrush.
All around Mek his men were firing. He wondered, how many of them Salim
had taken with that first burst, but there was no longer anything to
see. The enemy were all down in cover. A faint haze of gunsmoke blued
the air as they returned fire, and the scrub trembled and shook to the
recoil and the muzzle blast of their weapons.
Then, in the uproar of fire, in the whine and wail of ricochets off the
rocks, one of them began to scream.
"I am hit. In Allah's name, help me." His cries rang eerily across the
hillside, and the enemy fire slackened perceptibly. Mek clipped a fresh
magazine on to the AKM.
"Sing, little bird. Sing!the muttered grimly.
t required the combined strength of Nicholas, Hansith and eight other
men to lift the lid off the stone sarcophagus. Staggering under its
weight, they laid it carefully against the wall of the tomb. Then Royan
and Nicholas stood on the plinth of the sarcophagus to look down into
the interior.
Fitted neatly into the stone receptacle was an enormous wooden coffin.
Its lid too was in the form of the reclining Pharaoh. He was in the
posture of death with his hands crossed at his breast, clutching the
flail and the crook. The coffin was gilded and encrusted with
semiprecious stones. The expression on the face of the king's effigy was
serene.
They lifted the coffin out of the sarcophagus, and its weight was less
than that of the stone lid, Carefully Nicholas split the golden seals
and the layer of hard dried
01 . Within it they resin that held the lid of the coffin in plac ctly,
and when the found another coffin, fitted perfe as revealed. It was
like a ened that yet another coffin wOP
nest of Russian dolls, one within the other, becoming smaller with each
revelation. coffins, each of them'
In the end there were seven mate and richly decorated than the
progressively more previous one. The seventh coffin was only slightly
larger I than a man, and it was made of gold. The polished metal caught
the light of the lamps like a thousand mirrors and the tomb.
threw bright arrows and darts into every recess coffin they When at
last they opened the golden inner found that it was filled with flowers.
The blooms had dried and faded, so their colour was sepia. Their scent
had long ago evaporated, so that only the musky aroma of great age
wafted up from the coffin. The petals were so dry and apery that they
crumbled at the first touch. Beneath the faded blooms was a layer of
the finest linen; once it must have been snowy white, but now it was
brown with age the flowers. Through the and the stain of the juices from
soft folds they saw once again the gleam of gold.
standing on either side of the coffin, Nicholas and Royan peeled back
the linen mesh. It crackled softly and but as it came tore like tissue
paper und their fingers, away they both involuntarily gasped with
wonder as the as only fraction ask of Pharaoh was revealed. It death-
man, but it was a perfect ally larger than the head of a it. Pharaoh's
features had been pre, image in every deta ty in this extraordinary work
of art.
served for all eterni ed in silent wonder into the obsidian and rock
They star crystal eyes of Pharaoh, and Pharaoh gazed back at them sadly,
almost accusingly it was a long time before either of them could summon
the head thecourag6 and presumption to lift it away from did so, they
found further of the mummy. But when the
evidence that in antiquity the body of the king and that of his general,
Tanus, had been changed. The mummy that lay before them was obviously
too large for the coffin that contained it. It had been partially
unwrapped, and cramped into the interior.
"A royal mummy would have had hundreds of charrns and amulets placed
beneath the wrappings," Royan whispered . "This is the plainly dressed
corpse of a nobleman and not that of the king."
Nicholas gently lifted the inner layer of bandage away from the dead
head and a thick coil- of braided hair was revealed.
"The portraits of Pharaoh Mamose on the walls of the arcade show that
his head hair was dyed with henna," Nicholas murmured. "Look at this."
The braid was the colour of the winter grasses of the African savannah,
gold and silver.
"There can be no doubt now. This is the body of Tanus. The friend of
Taita and the lover of the queen."
"Yes," Royan agreed, her eyes soft with tears. "He is the true father of
Lostris's son, who became in his time the Pharaoh Tamose and the
forefather of a great line of kings.
So this is the man whose blood runs through the history of ancient
Egypt."
"In his way he was as great as any Pharaoh," Nicholas said quietly.
t was Royan who roused herself first. "The river!'
aT
she cried, with a razor edge to her voice. "We cannot let all this go
again, when the river rises."
"Neither can we hope to save all of it. There is too much. A great mass
of treasure. Our time here has almost run out, so we must pick out the
most beautiful and important pieces and pack them into the crates. Lord