‘A
‘. . . we’ve found the pyramid,’ Eddie finished. ‘So, back across the Med, then!’
‘Rest assured, I will be co-operating with the authorities to find out who was responsible for this catastrophe,’ Osir told the news crew. ‘It’s been a terrible day for the sport, for Team Osiris, for Mikko Virtanen - and for myself personally, as you can imagine.’
‘What about the reports of a shootout on your yacht?’ asked the newsman, thrilled to have a story more juicy than sports reporting.
Osir needed all his acting skills to keep a neutral face. ‘I don’t know anything about that, only what the Monaco police have told me. Thank you, and excuse me.’ He retreated into the VIP box, the newsman still firing questions as he closed the door.
Shaban and Diamondback were waiting. ‘Well?’ Osir demanded.
‘Wilde and Chase must have got away,’ Shaban said grimly. ‘The Monaco police haven’t caught them, and since it would only take them ten minutes to reach the border I doubt they will.’
‘What about the yacht? Did the zodiac survive?’
‘Yes, so we still have that, at least. I’ve arranged for it to be shipped to Switzerland once the police clear the scene.’
‘My God,’ said Osir, shaking his head as he sat. ‘How did they escape?’
‘Because you were soft,’ Shaban snapped. Osir was startled by the fury in his brother’s voice. ‘I warned you! You fell for that woman, and she betrayed you. I
Osir jumped up again, stabbing a finger at Shaban. ‘You do not speak to me like—’
‘This is
‘Yes,’ Osir said reluctantly. ‘Yes, you’re right. I’m sorry. I should have listened to you, my brother.’
Shaban nodded, satisfaction on his scarred face. ‘Then we’re agreed. We find them, and kill them, and take the pyramid for ourselves.’
‘Agreed,’ said Osir.
‘Just one minor problem,’ Diamondback said, voice heavy with sarcasm. ‘We don’t know where they’re goin’, and we don’t know where the pyramid is either.’
‘We need an expert,’ said Shaban. ‘Someone who knows the entire history of Egypt.’
‘Hamdi?’ asked Osir.
Shaban shook his head. ‘Hamdi is a glorified librarian. We want someone world-class . . .’ He smiled malevolently as an idea came to him. ‘And someone with a grudge against Nina Wilde.’ Raising his phone, he selected a number: the Osirian Temple’s Swiss headquarters. ‘This is Sebak Shaban. I need you to contact the International Heritage Agency in New York, and tell them . . . tell them I want to speak to Dr Logan Berkeley.’
21 Egypt
What initially seemed like a simple trip back to Egypt quickly turned into a far more stressful experience. An attempt to book a flight from Nice was stymied when Macy discovered - to her mortification - that her credit card had been cancelled. Her parents had pulled the plug.
An angry phone call home made it clear that her line of credit would be only restored if she agreed to go straight back to Miami. Nina’s suggestion that, now they knew Abydos was the key to finding the Pyramid of Osiris, her work was done and she could return to the US did not go down well.
Eddie managed to defuse the tension between the two women by cobbling together an itinerary that was - just - manageable on his and Nina’s strained finances, flying from Nice to Athens on a no-frills budget carrier, then on to Cyprus, and from there a plodding ferry to Egypt’s Port Said. Following that was a slow and draining overland journey south by rail to the town of Sohag. Tempers frayed, they traversed the last miles in a rented 4?4, finally reaching their destination three days after leaving Monaco.
If Cairo had been uncomfortably hot, then Abydos, three hundred miles further south on the edge of the Sahara, was almost agonising. The temperature was well over a hundred degrees Fahrenheit, and what breeze there was provided little relief, being laden with gritty, astringent sand. Nina was already on her second bottle of water, and it was still only morning.
As usual, Eddie barely seemed to notice the conditions, still wearing his leather jacket; his only concession to the burning sun was a floppy cloth hat to protect his balding scalp. ‘Could be worse, love,’ he offered. ‘At least it’s a dry heat.’
‘Hilarious,’ Nina snapped. Her pale skin had forced her to cover up, and unlike her husband she was sweltering. ‘God, I hate deserts. Why are the best ruins always in such God-awful places?’
But despite her foul mood, she was still impressed by what awaited them. The remains of the ancient city of Abydos sprawled over a wide area, the majesty of the temples in stark contrast to the ugly little village nearby. But when they stood before the structure they had come to see the modern world was figuratively and literally behind them, nothing in sight beyond the partially buried remains of the Osireion except the bleak wastes and distant cliffs of the Western Desert.
They had the place almost to themselves, a coach party there when they arrived having left for the next destination on its whistle-stop tour of Upper Egypt. A couple of policemen had been lurking nearby - unescorted visits to the ruins were discouraged - but a bribe persuaded them to wander back into the village for a few hours.
‘So, what are we looking for?’ Nina asked Macy. ‘You’re the expert.’
‘Well, I wouldn’t exactly call myself that,’ she said, falsely modest.
‘You’re the nearest we’ve got,’ said Nina dismissively. ‘So, what’s the deal?’
Macy turned to the much larger, more intact structure behind them. ‘That’s the Temple of Seti, or Sethos, there,’ she said, ‘which was built by his son Ramesses the Second sometime round 1300 BC. The cool thing about it is that it’s totally unique architecturally. All the other Egyptian temples run in a straight line, yeah? You go in through the entrance, and each hall comes one after the other. But this one,’ she pointed out a section to their right, ‘is kinked.’
‘I like a bit of kinkiness,’ said Eddie.
Nina shushed him. ‘Why’s it that shape?’
Macy looked back at the Osireion. ‘Supposedly, the Temple of Seti and the Osireion were built at the same time. That’s what most of the books say, anyway. So did my professor. But it didn’t really make sense to me, and it turns out some archaeologists think so too. I mean, why would you bend your temple in half to avoid another building if they were being built at the same time? It’s not like they were short of space to put the second one farther away.’ She indicated the empty desert past the ruins.
‘So there’s another theory?’ asked Nina.
She nodded. ‘Some people think the Osireion was already here way before 1300 BC. It’d been buried by sand, but Ramesses discovered it when the Temple of Seti was being built. Things were too far along for him to stop work on the temple, but he didn’t want to knock down the Osireion either . . . so he changed the plans to make the new temple go round a corner.’
‘Why’d he want to keep it so much?’ said Eddie.
Nina knew. ‘Because it was a copy of the tomb of Osiris himself. They’d lost the location of the original tomb centuries earlier, but they realised they had the next best thing.’
‘And if we’re right,’ said Macy, ‘somewhere inside it is the Eye of Osiris.’
‘Which points the way to his pyramid. So all we have to do . . . is find it.’
They crossed the stony sands to the Osireion. The site was practically a pit, a series of stepped walls leading
