Текст книги "Keystone"

Автор книги: Luke Talbot

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Luke Talbot was born in Suffolk, England, in 1979 and moved to the south of France when he was eleven. He spent his early years exploring the mountains and ruins of the Languedoc and became obsessed with the ancient Romans and their architecture.

Returning to the United Kingdom to study archaeology at Southampton University, he graduated with honours and moved on to technology, achieving a Master’s in Information Systems from Portsmouth University in 2002.

Since 2003 he has worked in telecommunications and he currently lives in Southampton, England, with his Spanish wife, two children and their goldfish, Pancho IV.

Copyright © 2013 Luke Talbot

First published in the UK in 2013. This edition published in the UK in 2014 by Perseo Books Limited.

All rights reserved.

Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the copyright owner and publisher of this book.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, institutions, places and incidents are creations of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual or other fictional events, locales, organisations or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Cover art by Tiago da Silva, www.tiagodasilva.com

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978-0-9576019-1-8 (B Format Paperback)

ISBN 978-0-9576019-2-5 (eBook)

Printed and bound in Great Britain by Clays Ltd, St Ives plc.

Typeset in Adobe Garamond and Adobe Trajan Pro Regular

To my wife, Sonia, for taking my dreams and making them real.

It was an unsatisfying knock, hesitant, the hard wood swallowing the dull thud almost instantly and making him wonder if it could possibly have been heard from within. He tried again harder, more assuredly. Too much, he flinched as the noise echoed down the corridor behind them.

“Enter!” a wheezy voice snapped from beyond the small, heavy door.

He looked sideways at his partner, by an inch the taller of the two and holding a leather satchel against his chest, before lifting the latch and pushing inwards. The door groaned on its hinges like an old man turning in his sleep.

They ducked into the room, a mess of papyri and clay-dust. The walls were covered in shelves stacked high with documents, and a vast workbench made of stone and wood filled almost all the remaining space. The dry, musty smell of scribe’s ink hung in the air.

Perched on a stool at the far end of the workbench, holding a simple reed quill, was the source of the voice: a small, leathery man, his wispy remnants of hair held back by a colourful band of cloth across his forehead. He quickly hid his work under a flat, polished piece of wood, and gave them both an irritated look. “Oh, it’s you again,” he said dismissively.

They looked at each other and then back at the scribe. The one with the satchel opened it and pulled out a large clay tablet. “We bring news from Shuwardata of Keilah,” he said, walking forwards and placing the tablet next to the old man.

The scribe looked at the clumsy document and sighed. The simple indentations in the clay were like the random impacts of rain in sand compared to the graceful hieroglyphs to which he had devoted his life. Even his shorthand was more elaborate. Tapping the nib on the side of his ink-palette, he placed his quill in a slot on the workbench and glanced over the end of his nose at the cuneiform tablet.

“More requests for money, soldiers, and a dozen other things,” he said, clucking his tongue. He pulled the tablet off the desk and walked slowly towards a shelf at the far end of the room. “And I know what the king would like me to do with your news,” he said as he tried to find the perfect place to file it. “Whine, moan, never happy when we’re around and when we’re not just complaints that they need help. Thank the Aten this doesn’t need to go on much longer,” he muttered under his breath.

The man with the satchel leaned over the workbench to look at the papyrus the scribe had been working on, its top half still protruding from under the piece of wood. The scribe spun round. “And spies, indeed!” he threw the tablet on top of a large pile of similar rectangles of hardened clay and dashed back to cover his work, waving the two messengers away with his hands.

Ignoring his gesticulations, the man who had knocked on the door stepped forwards.

“We have travelled for many days to bring this news to your king,” he said. “We will not simply turn on our heels and go back. We demand an audience with Akhenaten.”

The scribe looked at them both and sneered.

“No, you don’t. Nobody demands that. I am not just Suten Anu, the royal scribe,” he breathed in deeply, seeming to grow taller by several inches. “I am the royal architect. I am working on the commission of my king and queen. That commission has significance beyond these four walls, beyond the royal city of Akhetaten, beyond this great kingdom of Egypt and yes indeed, beyond even that of your beloved Shuwardata of Keilah.

“And yet even I do not demand to see them. You arrived without fanfare, but nonetheless they know that you are here. If your presence was desired or even required, they would already have sent for you by now.”

They shifted uneasily on their feet at this statement from the diminutive scribe, royal architect, who then softened and gave them an insincere smile.

“Mahu!” he shouted unexpectedly at the top of his voice. The messengers looked towards the door.

“But of course,” he continued sympathetically, the wheeze returning to his voice, “I am sure you will be welcome to stay and enjoy the evening’s festivities!”

At that moment Mahu, chief of police, burst in with two foot soldiers and after a short scuffle the door closed behind them, leaving the scribe alone with his work.

He uncovered his papyrus and looked at it uneasily, his shoulders sinking as the adrenalin in him died. There it was: his treason, his betrayal in black and red ink as clear as obsidian and blood on sand. But it had to be that way. He couldn’t let this secret, this terrifying truth, be buried in the desert for all eternity.

Carefully, he rolled the papyrus up and slotted it into a wooden tube, which he then capped with canvas bound with twine. When his tasks in Akhetaten were complete, he would travel south, away from this crumbling kingdom. He didn’t yet know what to do with his treacherous document, but instinct had taken him this far and would lead the way again, he was sure.

The next morning, just before the sun rose above the hills to the East and enveloped the regal capital of Akhetaten with its warm embrace, the scribe greeted Queen Nefertiti on a cliff-top a mile to the north of the city. The king, Akhenaten, was already too weak to make such trips and she had now, albeit unofficially, assumed almost full control.

In her absence from the palace, the king usually busied himself playing as best he could with his son, the disobedient and contrary Tutankhaten. The child was not Nefertiti’s, and even though he was barely four years old she could sense where his defiant nature would ultimately lead. Akhenaten would not last much longer, and on her own she didn’t know for how long she could retain control of the already fragmenting kingdoms of Egypt.

The scribe directed her to a hole in the ground hidden inside a large tent. Steps hewn into the bedrock descended into darkness.

“How safe will it be?” She was all too aware of the grave robbing that took place in the kingdom; sometimes mere months after a tomb had been sealed.

“The most secure there has ever been,” he said proudly. “The workers are brought here blindfolded. On the surface they work only at night, and underground none have visibility of the overall plan. When we finish only I shall know where and how to enter, and what is inside.”

She looked him up and down. This small man and old friend had already devoted most of his working life to this task and she held him in the highest regard. That he was the only one apart from the king and queen to know the full details of what lay beneath their feet was a great comfort to her.

He shuffled over to his portable work-bench and picked up a small wooden tablet and a lump of charcoal with his right hand, an oil lamp with his left. Together they went down the steps, the empty tent above them beginning to fill with the golden hue of dawn.

“Suten Anu,” Nefertiti’s soft voice barely echoed in the narrow tunnel, “what you have built here is important, but what it conceals even more so.” She stopped before the end of the steps and turned to him. For a moment he looked her in the eyes but quickly looked down. “No,” she continued, lifting his chin with her hand. “I want you to see me when I tell you this.”

He let his eyes draw uncomfortably-level with hers.

“What lies within must not be found,” she pleaded with him. “Not by our people, or by the kingdoms we barely keep at bay. It must be held secret and safe for thousands of years, and what you have built must protect it.”

It was difficult to hold her gaze and he found himself once more looking to the floor. He tried hard not to think of the scroll hidden away inside his workbench.

“Suten Anu,” she pulled his chin up again. “The secret of what lies beneath us must die with you. Can you guarantee me that?”

He clutched his tablet and charcoal tighter still and fixed her penetrating gaze as best he could.

“Yes,” he lied.

Chapter 1

The sun broke through the slow-moving clouds and bounced off the glass side of the Faculty of Humanities building before plunging into the depths of the dark, cool water of an ornamental pond. The sound of birdsong broke the silence of the square, and a couple passing by stopped to hold each other in a loving embrace. Overhead, the vapour-trail of a passenger plane connected the two banks of grey cloud, through which the deep blue summer sky could be seen.

Moments later the sunlight retreated from the water, past the glass side of the building and up into the sky as the clouds connected once more.  The loving couple broke their hold on each other and moved on.  The optimistic chaffinch sang in bursts for several minutes before silence returned.

Gail Turner rushed past without noticing any of this because she was, as usual, late.  The glass doors of the building slid open as she approached, recognising the tiny chip embedded in her forearm.  The chip ID system could, technically, record her every movement around the campus, although it was effectively rarely used for anything other than opening doors and logging on to computers.

The security guard looked up in surprise as she burst into the long connecting corridor which led to the main foyer.  Recognising the short, dark-haired woman, he shook his head and returned his gaze to the small tablet computer propped up on the desk in front of him.  Gail crossed the foyer and took the steps to the second floor two by two, ignoring the lift.  She knew that she would be the last person there, so she didn’t have time to wait while the machine made its way down to the ground floor to pick her up.

Being late for a lecture during the first year of your degree was par for the course, in your second year excusable, and in your third and final year probably a bad idea. But being late at the end of your master’s degree, for a study group that only had three other members and was supposed to help lay the foundation for the PhD she intended to begin that year, was bad even by Gail’s standards.

She pushed the door inwards softly and slid inside.

“Sorry,” she said quietly as she closed the door behind her.

The two other students looked up in amusement and she got a reprimand from Mr David Hunt, in the form of a quick shake of the head and an almost inaudible tut, which was about as severe as reprimands went where David was concerned.  It was in his office that the study group was being held, and Ellie Pyke had to make space by shifting a huge pile of manuscripts and ring-binders from the chair beside her.  Gail sat down, rescued her tablet from the mess of her handbag, flipped open its cover and sat back in her chair before looking at them all expectantly.

David gave her a wry smile.

“Anyway, as I was saying before Mrs Turner decided to pop in: Burynshik has really forced us to recontextualise pretty much every other site in Europe and central Asia, from the late Palaeolithic to the early Mesolithic.”

Gail leaned forwards and tucked her tablet against her chest. She may have been late, and she may not have done all the reading she should have, but there really was nothing like a David Hunt monologue to really capture the imagination.

What always amazed Gail was that despite her interest in the subject, no matter how fascinating the prospect of uncovering artefacts that had been lost to the world for hundreds or thousands of years, she would always end up late to most things.  As one of the more mature students, being thirty-two while most others were in their early to mid-twenties, her excuse to David, should the subject ever come up, was that she had a family to look after and a house to clean.

This wasn’t true of course; not that she didn’t have a family, taking George out of the equation would have broken his heart, but rather that as children weren’t even on the radar and George mostly worked from home, there was honestly little for her to do other than study.

“I can’t believe that no one knows where that structure came from” a voice said beside her.

“Sorry?” Gail looked up over her coffee cup on the table. The study group over, they had gone to the Faculty’s small café for one of their usual mid-morning chats. “Oh, sorry Ellie, I was thinking about my research proposal.” Ellie’s face was a mixture of sympathy and amusement. Gail slumped down on the table and stared at her coffee, which was cooling down nicely.  “It’s useless. One minute I think I’ve got it, and then before you know it I lose interest and give up,” she sighed. “I don’t know, I just look at the way David talks about his research and I get it, you know?”

Ellie nodded. “He does make it sound interesting, for sure.”

“It’s not sounding interesting, it is interesting. That’s what I want, something big, something different,” she looked out of the window at the clouds moving across the sky; it looked like rain. “I give up, it’s useless. I’m useless.”

“That’s true, you are,” Ellie agreed. “You have a degree in politics, which you aced by the way, you used to work for a Member of Parliament, then you did a second degree in archaeology, now you’re just finishing your master’s degree, and you’re about to submit a research proposal to do a PhD,” she counted everything out on her fingers. “You see? Absolutely useless, I mean, what have you been doing with yourself?”

One of the reasons Gail loved Ellie was for her sarcasm. And she was right; her career path had been a little odd, starting in politics and ending up here in the Faculty of Humanities café over a decade later worrying about her PhD thesis. It was always the first question that came up when people found out what she did: how did you end up moving from politics to archaeology? And every time her answer was the same.

Gail had always wanted to make a difference. She had wanted to change things for the better and really achieve something. For as long as she could remember she had been ambitious, and deep down inside had felt that she was destined for something big. A first-class honours degree in Politics and International Relations had been her first step along that path, after which she had opted not to continue as a postgraduate but instead take a position working as an assistant for her local MP. Which was where it had all started to fall apart.

There had been nothing wrong with her employer, far from it: Janet had been just as full of integrity as Gail aspired to be. But gradually, over the several years she worked with her, she had become frustrated and disillusioned with the inner workings of politics. It was a job in which she felt she could make little real difference, despite Janet’s assurances to the contrary.

It was at that time that she met George, and everything changed. Seeing how unhappy she was in her job, he encouraged her to go back to university to pursue something she loved, not become bitter working in something she was quickly losing faith in.

So politics went out of the window, and in came a degree in archaeology. Because alongside her burning desire to make a difference in the world came a passion for ancient civilisations: of the scarce vivid memories she still had of her father, her fondest were of going to ancient Roman ruins with him. He’d pick her up in his arms and explain everything to her in amazing detail, so much so that her early childhood dreams had been filled with chariot races, gladiators, vast temples and the Roman Forum.

Ellie had heard all this before. She knew how much Gail loved archaeology, she just needed a spark to get going again.

“Look, we’re both just frazzled from working so bloody hard on our master’s, so having to think about what we’re going to work on for the next four years is a bit like asking someone if they fancy swimming the Channel right after finishing the London marathon,” she joked. “The only difference between me and you is that I’m just going to take what I did in my master’s and build my research on that. But you’re not me, you need a new challenge. I’m sure something will come up, it always does.”

Gail scoffed and took the first sip of her coffee.

“That has to be cold by now,” Ellie commented.

“You know I always drink my coffee cold!” Gail replied with a grin. “And no, before you say it, it isn’t easier to ask for iced coffee. It’s not the same.”

Ellie looked back at her and laughed. Four years earlier they had happened to be sitting next to each other in their first lecture, ‘The Archaeology of the Roman World’. Whether it had been that they shared the same sense of humour, or simply the fact that they were both the same age, they had instantly clicked. They had spent the next three years pretty much joined at the hip, even going so far as to choose parallel dissertation topics. Gail had then gone on to do a master’s in Social Archaeology, while Ellie had taken Ceramic and Lithic Analysis, something Gail had always loathed since her first taster unit as an undergraduate.

Now, here they were about to do PhDs. And along with her husband George, Ellie was the closest Gail had to family.

“You’ll find your Burynshik sooner or later, I know you will.  Just make sure it is sooner rather than later: you’ve pretty much got a September deadline for your proposal, which is less than ten weeks away!” Ellie exclaimed. “Why don’t you ask David if you can look into those Caspian Sea structures with him?”

“I don’t know,” she mused. “I do find it really interesting, but then is that really a good idea?”

David Hunt obviously enjoyed his subject matter enormously, and his enthusiasm always rubbed off on his study group, but he was by no means what you would call a traditional academic, having written more than one bestseller on the subject of ancient conspiracies and so-called forgotten history.  His theory was that the history of the human race had been vastly underestimated by scholars, and that there were advanced civilisations tens of thousands of years before the rise of even the earliest known written records. This usually led to unfortunate parallels with Atlantis theories, which never went down well with his peers, regardless of how enthralled his students were.

He was in the middle of investigating some new finds in Kazakhstan; pretty much all of his spare time was spent on site, and he was preparing to return for the summer break.

The rapidly receding waters of the Caspian Sea had uncovered some perplexing archaeology near the small town of Burynshik, on the north-eastern coast of the country. What the remains had once been was certainly nothing unusual: wooden posts sunk deep into the mud, forming the foundation of what had almost certainly been small buildings above the water, possibly a fishing village.  The technology and architecture were similar to that found in early northern-European Iron Age settlements, before the arrival of the Romans. But experts had started to scratch their heads when the results of dating analysis had returned from Moscow State University.

At first, they had tried to use radiocarbon dating, and their first samples were found to contain less than five percent of Carbon-14. This meant that the wood had to be over twenty-thousand years old.  Not believing this to be the case, further samples were sent to Moscow, all returning similar results. The wood was also sent to Cambridge in England, to be dated using dendrochronology, or tree-ring dating.  The combined results were conclusive: the Burynshik remains did not fit into any known long tree-ring sequences, meaning they could not be chronologically linked with any other wood found to date.

As he had told them this, he had put his tablet on his desk and leaned forward, fixing them all intently with his gaze. He then almost whispered, as if letting them in on a closely-guarded secret, that the structures were confirmed to be between 23,560 and 23,760 years old.  The general intake of breath from his small audience made him smile, and they had finished the study group with an animated debate on the subject of dating accuracy and sample contamination.

In the café, Gail was now scrolling through her notes on the site while Ellie went to get another cup of tea. She was just about to open a browser and start surfing the net when David Hunt’s face popped up on the side of the screen.

She tapped it.

“Hi Gail,” he said as his face filled the screen. “Studying hard, I see?” he smiled.

“Just having a chat with Ellie about your dig, actually,” she told him.

He grinned. “Excellent! Look, I’ve got some great news. Do you want to come and see me in my office?”

As Gail walked with Ellie along the main corridor of the Department of Archaeology, she thought about Mr Hunt and his passion for upsetting the natural order of things. In her mind, such a tack was a bit risky for her thesis; knowing her luck she would be shot down in flames for it, and she couldn’t risk her PhD like that. She and George had invested heavily in her academic career and had spent the last four years relying principally on his income. To throw everything away now wouldn’t go down well.

“What I really need is a good mystery that doesn’t involve upsetting half the department!” she said aloud, causing strange and amused looks from a group of future first-year students being shown around the campus.

For all their similarities, two more physically distinct people could not be found on the entire campus: while Gail was athletic and dressed in fashionable jeans and blouse, with smartly-combed chestnut hair tied back in a short ponytail, Ellie was plump and round, wore baggy combats and a loose t-shirt, and her hair was a mess of long dreadlocks.

“What I need is something different, something –”

“What you need is another coffee, maybe Irish it up a little this time though!” interrupted Ellie.

“Isn’t 11am a little early for that?” she grinned.

She knocked on David’s door and they both entered before waiting for a response.

“Ah, my favourite future doctorates!” he said rubbing his hands together. “Ellie, you’re welcome to stay.”

She nodded, though she hadn’t really offered to leave.

“Gail, I have just been speaking to an old friend of mine. I happened to mention your lack of inspiration for your thesis, and it just so happens that he is leading some expeditions this winter that you might find interesting. He’s short a couple of spaces, and I persuaded him he could do with a PhD student on the books,” he tapped his tablet a couple of times. “I’ve sent you some details. I told him that you are one of the brightest students here, and as such he would be a fool not to offer you a place immediately. I’m sorry I lied, but needs must,” he winked.

Gail flipped open her tablet and the brief summary from David flashed up.

“Egypt?” she gasped.

Ellie looked at the small, colourful, slightly amateurish summary brochure on her screen.  She looked at her friend’s face, then back again at the screen.  “Egypt, for a month?  You can’t do a thesis on Egypt!”

David shook his head. “The Department doesn’t specialise in Egyptology, for sure. But I think your Social Archaeology master’s sets you up perfectly, Gail.”

“It looks interesting, different,” Gail was nodding enthusiastically. “Besides, we’ve touched on Egypt before, in ‘Classical Mediterranean’ and I’m sure there was a first year course that covered it.”

David grinned. “One of mine in fact: ‘The Emergence of Civilisation’.”

“And the cost?” Ellie continued. “It’s for volunteers, Gail. They even underlined that bit, so they’re not going to pay for a free holiday to Egypt for you; you’ll probably even have to fork out for the accommodation and food yourself!”

They looked up at David, who sat on the corner of his desk and put his tablet down. “You’ve both been on digs before, and this is no different: they will have some reasonable accommodation and catering on site. From what I’ve heard it’s in the middle of the desert, so everyone will be in the same situation. As for flights, I can’t imagine they’re too expensive.”

Gail grinned. “I’m sure I can persuade George that it’s a good idea.” She knew she was probably going to have to soften him up a bit beforehand, though.

“Speaking of which, what about George?” Ellie replied.  “You can’t just leave him on his own for a month,” she sounded almost sorry for him, “and over Christmas!”

Gail knew this would hardly be a bar: she had no living relatives, her parents having died in a car crash while on holiday in France when she was nine. Her foster parents had younger children to care for now, so they rarely imposed on them for anything more than a coffee and an exchange of presents. For his part, George’s family were spread across three continents and his parents had moved to Canada the year before.  Christmas was going to be a quiet affair.

Gail thought about this for a moment and checked her calendar. She looked up at David and smiled. “I’ll think of something, don’t worry.”

“Great!” David clapped. “Look, you still have to apply for a place, but I’ll put in as good a word as I can. In the meantime do some brushing up, I’ve sent you a reading list so you should have some documents waiting for you.” The University library had digital copies of all its textbooks, and free access to most other digital libraries in the academic network. As her master’s supervisor, David was able to select any texts from these resources and assign them to her automatically, at which point they would become available in her tablet’s digital library. “If you want to do this, you need to send me your thoughts on your proposal by the end of next week, that way I can help you to make sure it’s perfect in time for your PhD application deadline.”

Gail thanked him and turned to go, leaving Ellie standing next to David.  “Well, are you coming?” she asked her. “We’ve got another study-group in five minutes.”

Ellie looked at David and then laughed. “My God, that Egypt thing really has affected her, hasn’t it?”

“What do you mean?”

“Gail Turner: on time!”