Morgan found it, it has to be here.’ He stopped and put a finger to his mouth. ‘Maybe we need to go inside the pyramid. Sahure’s is the only one it’s still possible to enter.’
Ben followed at a distance as Kirby scooted along the pyramid wall and came to the crumbled entrance. The historian started down the steps, dropped to his knees and began scrambling in through the narrow space.
‘Watch out for snakes,’ Ben said.
‘Give me a break,’ Kirby snapped back.
‘Scorpions too.’
‘Don’t be such a Cassandra.’
‘Cassandra happened to be right about the Trojan horse.’
‘Yeah, well, I happen to know there are no snakes here.’
Ben shrugged and said no more. Kirby wriggled away out of sight into the passage. Ben settled on a boulder and lit a cigarette. He filled his lungs with the smoke, let it trickle out of his lips and watched it tail away on the air.
Twenty minutes later, he heard wheezing and gasping as the historian re-emerged, his face red and shiny, his clothes covered in dust and his hair full of cobwebs. Kirby stood up stiffly and leaned against the side of the pyramid, recovering his breath.
‘Well?’ Ben said.
‘Zilch. There’s nothing in there.’
Ben turned away and scanned the desolate landscape. His guts were churning. Somewhere out there, Zara was being held hostage. This couldn’t go on. The days were going to tick by until the sands had run out of the hour- glass. And the rest was unimaginable.
He turned and walked away.
‘Where are you going?’ Kirby called after him.
‘This isn’t leading us anywhere,’ Ben replied. ‘I’m going back to the car.’
Kirby followed him along the causeway, protesting. ‘You can’t just walk away. It’s here. I know it’s here. Morgan found something and, if he could find it, I’m going to find it too.’
They’d reached the two pillars at the end of the causeway when Ben turned back to face him. ‘You don’t even know what you’re looking for. Maybe Morgan thought he found something. How do you know he even did?’
Kirby leaned against one of the pillars, wiping sweat from his brow. ‘Christ, it’s hot out here.’
‘Don’t move,’ Ben said.
Kirby looked up sharply. ‘What?’
‘Don’t move a muscle.’
‘Is this some kind of soldier-boy joke?’ Kirby demanded, turning red.
Coiling around the base of one of the pillars, camouflaged against the sand as it slithered towards Kirby’s foot, was a large snake. Ben instantly knew what it was. The eyes in the broad, triangular head were black and beady. Above each eye was a horn. Horned viper. One of the deadliest snakes in Africa. Its six-foot length wound slowly around the base of the column. The black forked tongue flickered in and out. It glided over Kirby’s foot.
Kirby felt the sensation, looked down and saw it. His eyes opened wide in horror, and his face turned from red to deathly white.
‘Stay put,’ Ben said quietly. ‘It’ll pass. It’ll only attack if you provoke it.’
But Kirby was already stamping and dancing around in panic. The snake reared up aggressively. Rasped its coils with the threatening ffffffff sound that said it was about to attack. The triangular head drew back and the long fangs folded out as it prepared to lunge at Kirby’s leg.
The strike never happened. Ben drew the Jericho from behind his hip and fired, all in one fluid movement. The snake’s head exploded and its body flopped in the sand. Kirby was yelling and screaming as the gunshot echoed across the ruins.
‘No snakes around here,’ Ben said. ‘Isn’t that what you told me, Kirby?’ He felt bad about having killed the creature. He stepped over to the limp body and bent down to pick it up and fling it away.
That was when he noticed that his bullet had chipped a piece out of the stone column behind Kirby, and removed some of the carved markings on it. Ben sighed. A few history books were out of date now.
He stood up, holding the dead snake in his hands.
Then he stopped. Let the snake drop, and crouched back down in the warm sand next to the pillar.
‘My heart, my heart. Jesus.’ Then Kirby looked down at Ben. ‘What are you doing now?’
Ben didn’t reply. He ran his fingers over the weathered stone, down from the bullet-chip to the strange carving he’d noticed near the column’s base. It was a little distinct from the other markings on the column, and seemed to be done in a different style.
There was no doubt about it. ‘I think you need to look at this, Kirby.’
‘What?’
‘Look.’ Ben pointed at the markings on the stone.
‘I see,’ Kirby said, puzzled. ‘But that’s-’
‘Not those, this one. The one lower down, away from the rest.’
Kirby stared.
‘It’s the seal you showed me,’ Ben said. ‘The temple, with the palm trees and the crowned bird.’
Kirby dropped to his knees next to him. ‘Shit, yes, I see it.’ He carefully brushed sand out of the markings with his finger. Studied them for a few seconds, and turned excitedly to Ben. The snake was forgotten now. ‘You’re right. It’s the seal of Wenkaura. He was here. This is what Morgan must have found.’
‘What’s that marking underneath the seal?’ Ben asked.
Kirby moved closer. ‘It’s pretty worn with age. Looks like a hieroglyph, though.’ He flattened his portly shape out on the sand to inspect it, tracing his finger along the symbols. ‘I’m pretty sure that’s the glyph for a chair, or a seat.’ He looked up. ‘But what does it mean?’
‘You tell me. You’re the expert, apparently.’
‘There has to be more,’ Kirby said. ‘We should scour the whole place.’
‘I thought you’d already done that,’ Ben said. ‘Let’s go. We’ve wasted enough time here.’
‘But-’
‘Move it, expert. You can figure it out.’
They climbed back in the Shogun. The seat was burning hot against Ben’s back as he fired up the engine and spun the wheels in the sand, bumping away from the pyramid site. They hit the road, windows open, cool air blasting in, and soon the Shogun was speeding northwards between green fields.
‘It’s a metaphor,’ Kirby said.
‘A metaphor.’
‘Got to be. Wenkaura is trying to communicate an idea through that symbol. Something that’s going to lead us to a specific place. Chair. Seat.’ He frowned, pressing his fingers to his temples. ‘Got it. It’s a symbol of authority. Position. You know, like our use of the expression “country seat”. Obvious, really.’
‘You’re just grasping at straws, Kirby,’ Ben said as he overtook a slow-moving truck and gunned the big car up the road.
‘You have any better ideas?’
‘Not yet. But you’re not doing so great yourself. You’re talking bullshit. And I don’t think the ancient Egyptians went in for metaphors.’
‘No, listen,’ Kirby insisted. ‘It makes complete sense. We know that Wenkaura, like all High Priests, was a man of very high position and privilege until Akhenaten started demolishing the religious order. He had an estate near Thebes, which is now the city of Luxor. Maybe that’s what Morgan had sussed out. Perhaps he was heading for Luxor.’
‘So what do you propose we do, professor?’
‘I wish you wouldn’t call me that,’ Kirby said testily. ‘I think we need to go to check out Wenkaura’s estate, or what’s left of it. Maybe we’ll find something.’
‘Like what?’
‘I don’t know until we get there, do I?’ Kirby snapped.
Ben was clutching the wheel so tightly that he felt he could almost rip it off the steering column. ‘Seat,’ he muttered to himself. ‘Chair.’ He thought about it.
