‘The killing of the sons!’ they blurted out in unison.
‘Are you sure?’ asked Mansoor.
‘Absolutely,’ Daniel followed up. ‘In the Bible, it says that Pharaoh decreed that all male babies of the Israelites be thrown into the river – hence Moses being hidden in the bulrushes to save him. And on the Mernepteh stele it says, “Israel is laid waste, nought of seed .” It couldn’t be clearer.’
Daniel had mixed feelings. He was making monumental progress in deciphering ancient texts that played an import ant part in Jewish history. But he felt like he was treading water when it came to finding the papyrus that Harrison had purportedly translated in his elusive paper.
Chapter 28
Sarit was back in her hotel room in Cairo, waiting for further instructions after sending in her report about what happened at the hospital.
She had prepared the report as a text file and concealed it in a picture, using a technique known as steganography. The idea was based on the fact that a text message consisted of far fewer bytes than a picture. The message was broken down into bits and these bits were distributed over the picture in such a way that their only effect would be to make extremely slight changes to some of the colours of some of the cells. There would be no way that this could be detected by the human eye.
The pictures were purportedly of friends of ‘Siobhan Stewart’ in places like Switzerland and Australia. After embedding the report into the picture, she had logged on to the Internet via the hotel’s broadband, signed in to her social network account and sent it.
Now it was up to Dovi. It was probable that Goliath had failed in his mission, but he was still a threat.
Her phone beeped: New pics uploaded to your wall. She knew what this meant: her controller had some information for her.
She logged on and noticed that ‘Felicity’ – her Canadian friend – had uploaded a new picture. She downloaded the picture and then logged out and disconnected from the Internet. This would make it harder for anyone to see what she was doing, if indeed she was being watched. She then assembled the improvised aluminium foil screen around her laptop, to stop it from being monitored by way of electromagnetic radiation, and then launched the steganography program (itself cleverly disguised) and typed in her password.
Within seconds, this simple operation yielded the text – shown on screen but not saved to disk. Goliath is back at Cairo hotel. He has been ordered to get a sample of Klein’s and Gusack’s clothing and then to kill them. They have booked a flight to Luxor and so has he (following them). He is evidently planning to kill them there, probably in the Valley of the Kings. Follow him and neutralize him.
Chapter 29
Daniel was hit by an unexpected blast of heat as soon as he set foot outside the rented, air-conditioned jeep. They had flown in from Cairo earlier that morning and driven from Luxor Airport.
‘It’s this way.’ Mansoor was leading Daniel and Gabrielle across the sands of the eastern part of the Valley of the Kings – the main valley. The contrast between the lush green valleys of the Nile banks and the dry sands just a couple of kilometres beyond was striking.
They were passing a foothill which was over fifty feet high. People were getting around by open buses that reminded Daniel of the transits at Disneyland. It was the tourist season all year round these days, and visitors were usually advised to beat the midday heat by coming early. Indeed, many were already emerging from the small number of tombs that were open to the public, while others were queuing outside, preparing to enter. Only a small number of tombs were ever open to the public and of those, only a few at any one time.
But Mansoor was taking Daniel and Gabrielle to one that was not open to the public.
‘Here we are,’ said Mansoor, as the wall of rock to their left was almost in touching distance.
They were eyed from a few yards away by jealous tourists, wondering who these gatecrashers were. Most of their eyes were on Gabrielle, in fact. She had traded in her dark denim jeans for a faded, well-worn pair. They were still tight-fitting, showing every curve of body, but the fact that they had worn thin gave them a flexibility of movement that made them more comfortable when walking and climbing stairs. There was a tear in one of the knees, which gave her a slightly tomboyish look, but with her impressive height and perfectly toned form, she had the aura of a gladiator from ancient Rome.
The guardian at the entrance to the tomb smiled as Mansoor arrived and greeted him with the traditional, ‘ Ahlan wa-sahlan.’ The words – literally meaning ‘Family and easy’ – could loosely be translated as ‘Make yourself at home.’
They exchanged a few more words in Arabic and then Mansoor motioned with his arm to Daniel and Gabrielle, shepherding them towards the entrance.
‘This is KV46,’ said Mansoor.
‘The tomb of Yuya,’ Daniel replied, his memory stirring as he joined the Egyptian before the entrance. ‘A powerful courtier in ancient Egypt who served both Thutmose the Fourth and his son Amenhotep the Third.’
Mansoor nodded approvingly and entered the tomb ahead of them. The guards had switched on the electric lights that had been installed in the tomb soon after it was first opened, but a few steps down the stairway that was hewn into the rock, they all stopped like a column of cars held up by a red traffic light, to accustom their eyes to the dim light.
At the foot of the stairs, they found themselves walking down a corridor about thirty feet long that led to another staircase. The walls were rough and undecorated, not even smoothed let alone plastered, but they were covered with a meticulous grid of black dots spaced evenly apart both vertically and horizontally, effectively dividing the walls into squares. Daniel stopped to study them, shining a torch on to them to see more clearly. He had noticed the same square pattern of dots on the walls by the stairway. Daniel estimated that they were about sixteen inches apart. That would put them at the lower end of that variable ancient unit of measurement known as a cubit.
Mansoor led them to a second stairway and when they arrived at the bottom, they found themselves in another corridor, shorter than the first. But this one had a rounded ceiling, rather than a flat one. This was consistent with the fact that the ancient Egyptians understood the principle of the arch as far back as 4,500 years ago – a thousand years before this tomb was constructed – even if their public buildings continued to be post and lintel constructions for more than a whole millennium thereafter.
At the end of the corridor, they entered the burial chamber.
‘Much has been removed from here,’ Mansoor explained. ‘It was raided in antiquity, although the robbers took very little, possibly because they were scared off and the tomb resealed. But a number of the larger items remained, such as the sarcophagus and the three coffins, originally placed one inside the other – although they had been disturbed by tomb-raiders. Also, remember that Yuya’s wife Thuya was buried here too. And both their mummies were extremely well preserved.’
Daniel looked around in amazement. He knew about this tomb, but he had never dreamt that he would actually be standing here.
‘Yuya and Thuya were, if my memory serves me right, probably amongst the few non-royals to have a private tomb in the Valley of the Kings.’
‘That’s right,’ Mansoor confirmed.
‘And also in Yuya’s case,’ Gabrielle added, ‘one of the few foreigners to reach such a high rank, judging by the physical characteristics of his mummy. He was taller than most Egyptians and he had a beard, which Egyptians tended not to do. Also he had no body piercings.’
‘Is there any significance in that?’ asked Daniel.
‘Well… I believe that body piercing is forbidden by Jewish law.’
‘And Orthodox Jewish men have beards,’ Daniel added.
