The Cult of Osiris

the IHA called, huh?’ She grimaced. ‘No, that’s not what happened at all, they’re totally lying!’ She huffed impatiently. ‘Mom! No, I can’t come home, not just yet. I’ll come back as soon as I can, but there’s something I need to do first, it’s really important. I’ll tell you and Dad all about it afterwards. Oh, and if you think anyone’s watching the house, call the police, ’kay?’

That prompted a near-hysterical response loud enough for her hosts to overhear. ‘Jeez, Mom! Look, really, I’m okay. I’ll talk to you soon, okay? Give my love to everyone. Mom. Mom! I said I’ll call you. Okay, hanging up now. Bye. Bye.’

Macy lowered the phone, looking flustered and frustrated. ‘Parents! God! They can be such a pain sometimes.’ Then she looked at Nina, suddenly apologetic. ‘Oh! Sorry.’

Nina was confused. ‘For what?’

‘I read in the Time article that your parents died when you were about my age, so I didn’t want you to think I was saying that about all parents. I’m sure yours were great. Sorry.’ She went back to the laptop.

‘Er . . . okay,’ said Nina, taken aback.

‘Subtle, ain’t she?’ Eddie whispered.

‘Yeah. I think you two’ll get along fine.’

‘Tchah!’

‘Okay,’ said Macy, looking round at them, ‘so, flights to Egypt. Do you guys want regular or vegetarian meals?’

6

Giza

‘Hey,’ joked Eddie, ‘didn’t they get smashed up by the Transformers?’

‘I am so never letting you choose the movie again,’ muttered Nina as she gazed in awe at the three enormous monuments before them. The Great Pyramid of Giza was the only survivor of the Seven Wonders of the ancient world, the others lost to time and conflict millennia ago. Part of the reason for its endurance was sheer size; though Khufu’s pyramid and its companions, the slightly lower Pyramid of Khafre and the markedly smaller - but still massive - Pyramid of Menkaure, had long since lost almost all of their white limestone outer casings, their colossal cores of sandstone and granite remained intact after more than four and a half thousand years.

Macy was less impressed. Her hair hidden beneath a baseball cap and her face partly covered by a pair of oversized sunglasses, she ground an impatient foot into the gritty sand. ‘I’ve already seen the pyramids. Like, every day I was here. Why aren’t you talking to Dr Berkeley?’

‘Partly because he’s not here yet.’ Afraid of being recognised, Macy had not gone with Nina and Eddie to the Sphinx compound, where they unsuccessfully tried to persuade the IHA team to grant them access. ‘He’s doing some TV show in Cairo, talking about the dig. He won’t be back for a couple of hours. And partly because . . . well, I’m not coming all the way to Egypt and not visiting the pyramids!’

They set off up the road along the compound’s northern side. Eddie peered over the wall at the construction site below. ‘This shaft, it’s down there?’

Macy joined him. ‘Yeah. In that tent.’ She pointed it out.

He made a mental note of its position, also taking in that it was better guarded than Macy had described. Two men in uniform - though not that of the Tourist Police, suggesting they were private security contractors - were on watch.

Macy looked towards the Sphinx. ‘There are more guards than before.’

‘Making sure nobody else cocks up their dig,’ Eddie said. ‘Might be a good thing, though.’

‘How?’

‘If they’ve brought in new guys, there’s less chance of someone recognising you.’ He ran his fingers along the underside of the stone slab topping the wall as if testing its weight.

‘Something?’ Nina asked.

‘Just planning ahead. So, we going to get some pyramid power?’

The Great Pyramid’s base was only about a quarter of a mile from the Sphinx, though the massive area it covered, the bottom of each face over 750 feet long, meant the walk needed to reach the entrance on the northern side was close to twice that. The entrance itself, where several dozen people were already waiting, was gated and watched by the Tourist Police and official guides. Access to the pyramids’ interiors was only allowed twice a day to small numbers. Even exhausted by the eleven-hour flight from New York, Nina had insisted they be there the moment the ticket office opened.

When the gate opened, some discreet but firm blocking by Eddie allowed Nina and Macy to be the first to scale the stone tiers and enter. ‘It’s steeper than it looks in pictures,’ Nina commented. The narrow, smooth-walled passage descended into the heart of the pyramid at almost a thirty-degree angle, and the ceiling was uncomfortably low.

Eddie caught up, squeezing past an annoyed tourist at the entrance. ‘Christ, it’s cramped,’ he complained. ‘Guess the pharaohs were all short-arses. So, where does this go?’

‘There’re two routes,’ said Macy. ‘If you keep going down you end up in the original burial chamber, but it’s kinda boring, there’s nothing there. They decided to use a different chamber while the pyramid was being built.’

‘Must’ve pissed off the architects,’ Eddie said, grinning. ‘I can just imagine it. “He wants to do what? But we’re already halfway finished. Fucking clients!” ’

After sixty feet the passage split, one leg continuing down while the other, its ceiling even lower, headed upwards at an equally steep angle. Though she wanted to explore the entire place, Nina opted to take Macy’s words to heart and follow the latter route. Even this early in the morning, the air in the tunnels was hot and stifling. Leg muscles protesting at the floor’s steepness, she headed up the passage, bent low.

‘So did this place have any booby traps?’ Eddie asked.

‘Booby traps? Shyeah,’ said Macy sarcastically. ‘You only get those in Tomb Raider games.’

‘Oh, ya think?’ Nina said, prompting a surprised look from the other woman. ‘You should try reading the International Journal of Archaeology rather than just magazine articles sometime.’

‘I do read the IJA!’ Macy insisted. ‘Well, the interesting bits.’

‘It’s all interesting,’ said Nina, affronted.

‘Right, like finding sixteenth-century Mongolian toothpicks compares to discovering Atlantis.’ Behind Macy, Eddie laughed, annoying Nina even more.

But her irritation vanished as she arrived at another section of the pyramid’s interior. A horizontal passage branched off the one she was ascending, but it was the continuation of the climb that caught her attention. Though little wider than the tunnel from which she had just emerged, it was far taller, almost thirty feet high. The Great Gallery was a long vaulted chamber constructed from massive limestone blocks.

‘Now this is more like it,’ said Eddie, stretching as he emerged from the passage. ‘What was it for?’

‘There’s a theory that it was part of a counterweight system to lift blocks up to the top, but . . . nobody really knows,’ Nina admitted. Like so many aspects of the pyramids, the Great Gallery’s exact purpose was a mystery. She looked down the horizontal passage. ‘That’s the Queen’s Chamber down there, right?’

‘Yeah,’ said Macy as more tourists entered, most of them opting to take a break from the climb by going along the flat corridor. ‘Although there was never a queen in there - her pyramid’s a little one outside. It’s just another boring unfinished burial chamber.’

‘Another one?’ said Eddie. ‘Christ, the architects must have been throwing down their papyruses by now.’

‘Even if it’s empty, it’s hardly boring,’ Nina objected as she continued up the steps that had been added to the Gallery. ‘The workmanship - of all of this - is amazing even by today’s standards, and they did it all with just simple tools.’

‘And loads of slaves.’