“All right,” Alex said calmly. “Let’s start at the beginning. What have we got?”
Ryan sighed and cracked open a beer. “We have a slightly blurred photo of the Map of Immortality taken in a hurry on a camera phone.”
“It’s better than nothing, nerd,” Lexi shouted from the other room.
Ryan ignored her. “We have a heap of notebooks belonging to Giovanni and Dario Mazzarro, some of which look like they’re older than the actual pyramids.”
Alex was determined to keep him focused. “And what do those things tell us?”
“The symbols on the map pointed us to Egypt, and now it looks like they’re referring to the ancient Egyptian god Osiris.”
“And what do we know about him?”
“The same as everyone else — ancient Egyptian god of the afterlife and the dead, usually portrayed as having green skin. The oldest son of Geb, bla bla bla.”
“Or Ra, depending on who you read.”
“Sure.”
They heard a tongue-click from the bed. “Relevance?”
“The relevance, Scarlet, is that he was right at the top of the tree of gods in Egyptian culture, just like Poseidon, and…”
“Wait!” Alex picked up one of the notebooks and showed it to Ryan. “Look at this!”
Ryan stared at the page for a few seconds, open jawed. “No way!”
Eden moved forward. “Mr Bale?”
“Surely not…!”
“Ryan!” snapped Scarlet, spinning her legs off the bed and joining them at the desk. “Stop being a silly little tit and tell us what’s going on. Our people are missing.”
“These notes here seem to be indicating that…”
“What is it?” Eden asked keenly. “What have you got?”
“The Phaistos Disc.”
“I’m sorry?”
Alex smiled and turned to Ryan. “Do you want to tell them or should I?”
“The Phaistos Disc,” Ryan said again, ignoring her. “It was discovered in Crete in 1908 by the Italian archaeologist Luigi Pernier.”
Scarlet frowned. “And why do we give a damn about this, Ryan?”
Eden looked annoyed. “Let him get started, Scarlet, at least.”
“Thanks, Rich. Now, Pernier was a close friend of Giovanni Mazzaro later in life. And according to this they worked together on the disc, which according to history, no one’s ever been able to decipher.”
“But…?”
Ryan was hungrily reading the notes as he was relaying them to the others. “But Dario Mazzarro claims his father did so, and that it made references to a war between Poseidon and Osiris — a war over a map.”
Scarlet smiled. “What a surprise — another shagging map!”
“You betcha. He claims his father’s translation is accurate, and that it refers to the elixir of eternal life.”
“The source of the gods’ immortality?” Eden asked.
Alex shrugged. “Who knows? Now we’re getting into whether there’s a difference between an immortal man and a deity, and that’s way above my pay grade.”
Ryan sighed. “Well, actually…”
“Ryan, no time,” Scarlet said. “Alex, please continue.”
Alex laughed and took the notebook from Ryan. “Sure… Anyway, according to Mazzarro here, the map was even older than the gods of ancient Egypt and Greece, a kind of precious relic handed down to them from an older time. He claims they couldn’t agree on who would own the map, so they tore it in two and kept half each. Half was buried with Poseidon in his tomb in Kefalonia, and the other half disappeared into mythical history.”
For the first time since Sophie’s death, Ryan leaned back in his chair and laughed. “What’s so funny?” Eden asked.
“Nothing, really,” he said. “Just that all that effort by Emperor Qin just to raid Poseidon’s tomb and get the map and he only ever had half of the thing. Even if he’d been able to translate it he still wouldn’t have got anywhere.”
“So where’s the other half?” Eden asked.
“In Osiris’s tomb, I presume. That’s where Mazzarro comes in.”
“So we still need Mazzarro to find the tomb of Osiris?” Lexi said.
“We can find a bloody tomb without Mazzarro!” Ryan said, suddenly indignant.
“Sure we can!” Scarlet said. “I can find any tomb in the world, so long as the golden incentive is there…”
“But what does all this mean for us right now?” Lexi asked.
“It means we can do it — not only do we now know that Osiris was real and that he and Poseidon fought over the map, but we also know for sure that there are two halves of the map and that we — and Vetrov — only have half of it. If we can cross-reference Mazzarro’s research with the Phaistos Disc we should be able to translate the map faster.”
“But we still need Osiris’s half of the map if we’re going to find the Tomb of Eternity, right?” said Scarlet.
Alex nodded. “We can start translating the map we have right now thanks to this new information about the disc, but we only have half the map. Without the other half we’re never going to find the tomb, no.”
“So we raid the tomb, simples,” Scarlet said.
“If you’re sure Osiris was real,” Lexi said.
Ryan nodded. “If this is right, then it strongly suggests Osiris was real.”
“You mean like Poseidon?”
“Exactly — not a mythical figure but really here, in Egypt.”
“Woah!” Alex said, staring at the map.
”What is it?” Ryan said, turning toward her.
“This glyph right here — it’s the same as one on the Phaistos Disc that Mazzarro claims means Ipet-isut.”
Ryan’s jaw went slack. “No way!”
“Ryan!” Scarlet shouted.
“It means the most selected of places — it’s a reference to Karnak.”
“I don’t believe it.” Alex said. “So obvious, now…”
“I’ll say,” Ryan added. “The Hek-Djet — of course!”
Scarlet leaned in close to Ryan and tweaked his ear. “Stop talking in riddles and tell me what all this means, boy, or I’m going to take you outside.”
Ryan looked up at her and smirked. “You can take me in here if you like.”
“Ugh,” Scarlet said, and pushed him away. “In your wildest dreams that would still not happen.”
Alex looked on, bemused, before speaking. “It’s the Osiris Hek-Djet if the lecture’s going to be formal. It means Osiris, the Ruler of Eternity. Karnak is regarded as pretty much one of Egypt’s most important sites for archaeological artefacts. The thing is, if Mazzarro’s decipher matrix is right, then these hieroglyphics aren’t directing us to the Osiris Hek-Djet exactly, but beneath it.”
“Beneath it?” Lexi said, surprised.
Alex nodded. “Now we know how to translate all this it’s pretty obvious when you look at it. If Mazzarro’s research is right, then the Phaistos Disc makes a clear reference to the map being torn in two, one half going to Poseidon in Kefalonia and the other half going to Osiris — in the Hek-Djet. This is ancient knowledge.”
“And this means?” Scarlet asked.
Eden stepped forward. “It means we’re going to the Temple of Amun Ra in Luxor, right?”
Alex and Ryan nodded.
“Good,” Eden said flatly. “Start packing the gear up — we leave as soon as possible.”
“But what about Joe?” Ryan asked.
“Hawke has for as long as it takes us to pack up. After that he misses the boat and he’s on his own.” Eden looked at Scarlet and they shared a glance. “We can do this without Joe Hawke if we have to… we’ve done so plenty of times in the past, after all.”