ironwork which was closed and bolted. On the left it descended another twisting staircase that disappeared into the living rock.
‘Which way?’ Louren asked.
‘Let’s see what’s behind the gate,’ I suggested in a voice choking with excitement, and we went to it.
The heavy bolts were not locked but a thread of gold wire was twisted around the jamb of the gate, and a heavy clay seal closed the entrance.
The figure on the seal was of a crudely wrought animal, and the words, ‘Lannon Hycanus. Gry-Lion of Opet, King of Punt and the Four Kingdoms.’
‘Give me your knife.’ Louren said.
‘Lo, we can’t,’ I began.
‘Give it to me, damn you.’ His voice was shaking, thick with a peculiar lust and passion. ‘You know what this is? It’s the treasury, the gold vaults of Opet!’
‘Wait, let’s do it properly, Lo,’ I pleaded, but he took the seal in his bare hands and ripped it from the gate.
‘Don’t do it, Lo,’ I protested, but he pulled the bolts open, and flung his weight against the gate. It was rusted closed, but he attacked it with all his weight. It gave, swinging back far enough for Louren to squeeze through. He ran forward, and I ran after him. The tunnel turned again at right angles and led directly into a large chamber.
‘God!’ shouted Louren ‘Oh God! Look at it, Ben. Just look at it.’
The treasury of Opet lay before us with all its fabulous wealth untouched. Later we could count and weigh and measure it, but now we stood and stared.
The chamber was 186 feet long and twenty-one wide. The ivory was stacked along most of one wall. There were 1,016 large elephant tusks. The ivory was rotten and crumbly as chalk, but in itself must have been a vast treasure 2,000 years ago.
There were over 900 large amphorae, sealed with wax. The contents of precious oils had long since evaporated into a congealed black mass. There were bolts of imported linen and silk, rotted now so that they crumbled
The metals were stacked along the opposite wall of the vault - 190 tons of native copper cast into ingots shaped like the cross of St Andrew; three tons of tin, cast into the same shape; sixteen tons of silver; ninety-six of lead; two of antimony.
We walked down the aisle along the centre of the vault, staring about us at this incredible display of wealth.
‘The gold,’ Louren muttered. ‘Where is the gold?’
There was a stack of wooden chests, carved from ebony, the lids decorated with ivory and mother-of-pearl inlay. These were the only objects of an artistic nature in the vault, and even they were crudely executed battle scenes or hunting scenes.
‘No, don’t do it, Lo,’ I cried another protest as Louren began ripping open the lids.
They were filled with semi-precious stones, amethyst, beryl, tigers’ eyes, jade and malachite. Some of these were crudely cut and incorporated in gold jewellery, thick clumsy pieces, collars, brooches, necklaces and rings.
Louren hurried on down the aisle, and then stopped abruptly. In another recess that led off the main chamber, behind another iron gate, the gold was stacked in neat piles. Cast in the usual ‘finger’ moulds. The piles of precious metal were insignificant in bulk, but when, months later, it was all weighed the total was over sixty tons.
Its value was in excess of ?60,000,000 sterling. In the same recess as the gold were two small wooden chests. These yielded 26,000 carats of uncut and rough-cut diamonds of every conceivable colour and shape. Not one of these was smaller than one and a half carats, and the largest was a big sulky yellow monster of thirty-eight carats, and this added a further ?2,000,000 to the intrinsic value of the treasure.
Here was the wealth of forty-seven kings of Opet, accumulated painstakingly over the course of 400 years. No other treasure of antiquity could compare with this profusion.
‘We’ll have to be bloody careful, Ben. No word of this must leak out. You understand what might happen if it did?’ He stood with a finger of solid gold in each hand, looking down on the piles of treasure. ‘This is enough to kill for, to start a war!’
‘What do you want me to do, Lo? I must have help in here. Ral or Sally even.’
‘No!’ He turned on me ferociously. ‘No one else will be allowed in here. I will leave orders with the guards, no one but you and I.’
‘I need help, Lo. I can’t do it myself, there is too much here.’
‘I’ll help you,’ Louren said.
‘It will take weeks.’
‘I’ll help you,’ he repeated. ‘No one else. Not a word to anyone else.’
Until six o’clock that evening Louren and I explored the treasure vault.
‘Let’s find out where the other branch of the tunnel leads to,’ I suggested.
‘No,’ Louren stopped me. ‘I want to keep normal hours here. I don’t want the others to guess that we are up to something. We will go down to the camp now. Tomorrow we will have a look at the other fork of the tunnel. It can’t be anything like this anyway.’
We closed the stone door behind us, sealing off the secret passage, and at the guard post Louren made his orders clear, repeating them and writing them on the guard’s instruction sheet. Ral’s and Sally’s names were removed from the list of those allowed into the tunnel. And later he mentioned it to them at dinner. He explained it
