The Cult of Osiris

She stayed in the yard for almost twenty minutes, waiting until she was absolutely certain nobody was nearby before creeping back through the hole. The alley was empty, silent. Getting her bearings, she headed deeper into the sprawl.

After ten nerve-racking minutes, she reached a small square. Muffled music came from a cafe on the far side, but all she cared about was the battered yellow box of a payphone on a pole nearby. Warily watching the street, she fumbled for her remaining change, then made a call.

‘Macy? Is that you?’ Berkeley sounded even angrier than before.

‘Yes,’ she said, voice low. ‘They’re going to rob the Hall of Records! There’s another tunnel, they’re digging —’

He wasn’t listening. ‘Macy, come back here and turn yourself in to the police right now.’

‘What - what do you mean, turn myself in? I haven’t—’

‘Dr Hamdi has agreed not to press charges for assault, but only if you give yourself up and return the piece you took immediately.’

‘What piece?’ Macy protested, confused. ‘I didn’t take anything!’

‘Macy, Dr Hamdi and Mr Gamal both saw you chip a piece off the Sphinx! Do you have any idea how serious that is? People have been sentenced to ten years in jail for less! Running away has just made it worse, but if you come back now, I’ll do what I can to placate the authorities—’

‘Look, listen to me!’ she cried. ‘Hamdi’s part of it, and so’s Gamal! Go and look for yourself, there’s—’

‘Macy!’ barked Berkeley. ‘Get back to the dig, now, and give yourself up. If you don’t, there’s nothing I can do to help you. Just—’

Macy slammed down the receiver, fear and panic back in full force. What the hell was she going to do? Shaban had sent people to stake out the hotel. She couldn’t even collect her belongings. All she had were the clothes she was wearing and whatever she had in her pockets.

Which wasn’t much. Her camera, a small wad of Egyptian pounds, about a hundred US dollars. At least she still had her passport and credit cards; there was no way she would have left them unattended in her hotel room.

She weighed up her options. Whether she turned herself in or the police caught her, Hamdi and no doubt a parade of others would be ready to testify against her. And if Shaban’s people caught her . . .

The mere thought set her heart thudding again. They wanted her dead. And even if she got out of Egypt, they would be waiting for her to go home, watching her parents. She couldn’t risk getting them involved.

Then there was Shaban’s plan itself. If he got out with whatever he planned to steal before the IHA team opened the Hall of Records, nobody would even know they had done it, since Berkeley would be seen by millions as the first person to enter the chamber in thousands of years. She had to warn someone. But if Berkeley wouldn’t listen, she had to find someone else - someone more likely to believe her, and convince others to take action.

Macy stepped away from the phone, unconsciously adjusting her ponytail . . . and that triggered a thought.

She reached back into her pocket. There was something else with her passport: folded pages from a magazine. When she opened them, the face of an attractive woman, red hair in a ponytail much like Macy’s, smiled up at her.

Dr Nina Wilde. The discover of Atlantis, and more. Macy’s inspiration, the woman who had given her the determination to get here in the first place.

And a woman whose claims had been utterly disbelieved . . . before being proved spectacularly right.

She regarded the picture. It was a long shot; Dr Wilde was no longer with the IHA after some controversy the previous year. Macy had been disappointed at not getting the chance to meet her. But surely she still had enough influence to help . . .

If she could reach her. As far as she knew, Dr Wilde was in New York. And Macy was still less than a quarter of a mile from the Sphinx.

One step at a time, she decided, setting off for central Cairo.

1 New York City:

Three Days Later

Nina Wilde struggled to wakefulness, fighting simultaneously through the smothering sheets and the remnants of a cloying alcoholic fug to look at the bedside clock. It was well after ten a.m. ‘Crap,’ she mumbled, about to chastise herself for oversleeping . . . before remembering that she had nothing to get up for.

She almost pulled the sheets back up in the hope of returning to sleep, but even a brief glimpse of the small and ugly bedroom was enough to make her want to get out of it. Not that the rest of the apartment was much better, but it represented a least-worst option.

She put on a vest and a pair of sweatpants, ran her fingers through her unkempt hair, then padded into the other room. ‘Eddie?’ she called, yawning. ‘You here?’

No reply. Her husband was out, though he had left a note on the small counter separating the kitchen area from the rest of the cramped living room. As usual, it was as terse as a military communique. Gone to work. Will call later. Probably out until late. Love Eddie x. PS We need more milk.

‘Great,’ she sighed, picking up the small pile of mail beside the note. Credit card bill, probably large. Other credit card bill, almost certainly even larger. Junk, junk—

The last envelope had the name of a university printed in one corner.

Despite herself, she felt a flutter of hope, and hurriedly tore it open. Maybe this one was the way out of their miserable life of the past several months . . .

It wasn’t. She only needed to see the words We regret to know it was another rejection. The academic world had turned its back on her. Once someone was labelled a crank, it was a tag that was almost impossible to remove - even if that person had been right all along.

Nina put down the letter, then slumped on the creaking couch and sighed again. A smear campaign by a powerful enemy had not only cost her her job, but also left her regarded as a nut, on the same level as those who claimed to have found Noah’s Ark or El Dorado or Bigfoot. Her previous world-shaking finds - Atlantis, the tombs of Hercules and King Arthur - suddenly counted for nothing, academia as prone as any other field to having only a short-term memory: what have you done for us lately?

So now she was out of a job, out of prospects . . . and perilously close to being out of money. All she had was Eddie.

Except she didn’t, because the demands of his work meant he was almost never there.

A baby started crying in one of the neighbouring apartments, the thin walls doing little to muffle the noise. ‘God damn it,’ she muttered, putting her hands over her face.

Eddie Chase emerged from the East Side brownstone building, glancing up and down the street before descending the steps.

‘I saw that,’ said a woman’s voice behind him.

Eddie looked round at her. ‘Saw what?’

‘You, checking there wasn’t anybody outside who might know you.’ Amy Martin came down the steps, her dark bob bouncing, and squeezed the balding Englishman’s waist. ‘You’re so cute.’

‘It’s not exactly something I want getting back to Nina, is it?’ he told the younger woman. ‘I’ll tell her myself, when the timing’s right. And I don’t want anyone else to find out, either.’