The Cult of Osiris

‘Wonderful. Then before that, perhaps you’d join me for a glass of champagne?’

‘Ah . . . I really ought to go to bed.’ Privacy would give her a chance to try to contact Eddie.

‘Just one glass, please,’ Osir insisted. ‘I have a bottle of Veuve Clicquot in the next room - it would be a shame to drink it alone.’

‘What about all your . . .’ She almost said ‘bimbos’, but settled on ‘young lady friends?’

‘My followers?’ A jaded shake of the head. ‘They are all lovely, but sometimes I prefer more intellectual company. Someone with stories of her own. Like your discovery of Atlantis.’ He smiled again. ‘Just one glass.’

Three glasses later, Nina was kneeling on Osir’s bed, her dress spread out around her in a silken circle. ‘So I was stuck on this platform with Excalibur, an’ Jack was starting up the generator so he could start up a war . . . when boom! Eddie’d rigged up a hand grenade as a booby trap. After that, the whole ship started blowing up like something out of a Bond movie. We had to bail out in this sort of jet-glider thing - almost froze to death before we landed on a trawler. Man, that was a bad smell!’

‘Your life has been even more of an adventure than mine,’ said Osir, stretched out beside her. ‘And fortune is certainly on your side.’

‘If I were really that lucky, I wouldn’t have gotten shot. Check this out.’ She hitched up her skirt to reveal the circular scar of a bullet wound on her right thigh. Osir’s eyes widened at the sight of the bare leg just inches from his face. ‘I wouldn’t have had my life and my career wrecked, either.’

‘You don’t need to worry about that any more, Nina,’ he assured her. ‘Once we find the Pyramid of Osiris, your life will be . . . anything you want it to be. And very long, too.’

She drained her glass. ‘Do I get a free lifetime supply of Khalid’s Longevity Bread?’

‘You’ll get whatever you want.’

‘Glad to hear it.’ She frowned slightly, thinking back to the lab at the Swiss castle. ‘Is it safe, though? You said it was genetically modified.’

Osir chuckled. ‘Of course it will be safe. I’ll be eating it myself! No, the genetic modifications to the yeast are to make it into exactly what I want it to be.’

‘Which is? Or will your brother shout at you if you tell me?’

Another mocking laugh. ‘Sometimes it seems that Sebak thinks he is in charge of the Temple, not me! No, my brother was being overcautious, as always. The genetic modifications are partly so that we can obtain international copyrights and patents on the new organism - yeast is very easy to cultivate, after all. I don’t want everyone being able to bake their own bread of Osiris - they will have to come to the Osirian Temple for it. And also,’ his expression became more conniving, giving his handsome features an unexpectedly wolfish look, ‘I don’t want it to be too good at regenerating the body’s cells. People buying it once a year is not enough. They need to buy it once a month, or better still once a week.’

‘Sounds like you’re trying to get them hooked.’

He shrugged. ‘What is a modest amount of money every week in return for immortality? Better that it goes to the Osirian Temple than on cigarettes or drink or drugs. We give a good deal of money to charitable causes, after all.’

No doubt in countries where the Osirian Temple wanted political favours, Nina thought. ‘So that’s what you want: to choose who gets to be immortal?’

‘Fitting, don’t you think?’ said Osir. ‘Osiris decided who received everlasting life. I’m just following in his footsteps. But I think the world will think very highly of the man who brought it immortality.’ He finished his drink. ‘More champagne?’

Nina regarded her empty glass. ‘Oh. That went fast. I shouldn’t, really . . .’

‘I’ll open another bottle.’ He took her glass, then slid off the bed.

She lay down and closed her eyes. ‘Thank you, Khalid.’

‘My pleasure,’ he said, his smirk anticipating another kind of pleasure. He took another bottle from a fridge under a marble-topped bar, then crossed to the bathroom. ‘Excuse me one moment.’

He closed the door, then admired himself in the mirror before stripping to his silk boxer shorts and donning a dressing gown, also silk. A quick splash of cologne, then he stepped back into the bedroom.

To his delight, the lights had been turned down low, and an inviting shape waited beneath the expensive sheets. He climbed on the end of the bed, slowly moving up it. ‘I see you’ve made yourself comfortable.’ He gently pulled back the sheets . . . to see Eddie Chase grinning back at him.

‘Pucker up, Romeo,’ said Eddie, sticking Diamondback’s revolver into his face.

18

Osir cringed away as Eddie sat up. ‘How - how did you get in here?’ he demanded, outrage and fear battling for supremacy.

‘Yeah, I was kinda curious myself,’ said Nina from the zodiac room, where Eddie had wordlessly signalled her to hide when he crept into the cabin.

Keeping the gun on Osir, Eddie threw back the sheets and stood, his clothing sodden. ‘I looked for his boat where you told me at the harbour. Then I swam under the pier to it and grabbed the anchor chain. Just had to hang on until we got here.’

Osir blasted a glare of betrayal at Nina. ‘Then you are still with him! Sebak was right!’

‘Duh,’ Nina said. ‘Like I was really going to join up with the fruitloop religious cultist who tried to have me killed?’ She looked to Eddie. ‘Okay, now what?’

He gestured for Osir to move to the bathroom. ‘First thing, we tie him up and keep him quiet. Then we work out where this pyramid is, and then we bugger off and find it. Sound like a plan?’ She nodded. ‘All right, lover boy,’ Eddie said, advancing on Osir, ‘in there.’

The Egyptian’s eyes were fixed on Nina. ‘I really did have no desire to see anyone get hurt,’ he snarled. ‘But now I’m happy to make exceptions.’

‘Shut it, arsehole,’ said Eddie. He shoved Osir into the bathroom, toiletries clattering to the floor as the stumbling man’s elbow swept them from a shelf. ‘On your knees, head in the bog like you’re about to puke. Now!’ He pushed the revolver against Osir’s head as he knelt at the toilet bowl, then yanked loose his dressing gown’s belt. ‘Nina, tie his hands behind the pipe.’ He kept the revolver firmly in place as Nina secured the other man’s wrists to the waste pipe. ‘Then find something to tie his feet with.’

She went back into the cabin, returning with a collection of ties hanging over her arm. ‘Pick a colour.’

Eddie twisted one into a ball and pushed it into the protesting Osir’s mouth, then secured it with a second. He used a third to fasten his prisoner’s ankles together before tying the other end to a pipe beneath the washbasin. ‘Now listen, King Tut,’ he said, tapping Osir’s head with the gun. ‘One sound out of you, and I’ll flush you back to your ancestors. Got that?’ Mouth filled with the makeshift gag, all Osir could manage was an angry gurgle. ‘Good.’

He left the bathroom and locked the cabin door, then joined Nina at the zodiac. ‘So, you found the pyramid?’

‘Not yet,’ she admitted.

‘Well, how long’s it going to take?’

‘No idea.’

‘Maybe if you’d been working on it instead of getting pissed on Osir’s champers . . .’

She gave him an irritable look. ‘Don’t start, Eddie.’

‘And while we’re at it, what was going on when I came in? You were stretched out on his bed with your skirt hitched up to your knickers!’ Concern crossed his face. ‘You’re wearing knickers, right?’

‘Which part of “don’t” and “start” is so hard for you?’ Nina snapped.

‘Well, I think part of him was hard for you . . .’

She banged a hand on the Lexan. ‘For God’s sake, Eddie! I was stringing him along so I could get a look at this thing - so can you at least shut up and let me work?’ She indicated the table. ‘There are some notes his people made over there; can you get them for me, please?’

‘You’d better not be walking like an Egyptian tomorrow,’ he muttered as he collected them.