Текст книги "Keystone"

Автор книги: Luke Talbot

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 27 (всего у книги 36 страниц)

Gail cursed under her breath.

Ben raised an eyebrow. Looking from the steps to Gail, and then across to the hole in the wall that led to the Amarna Library, his gaze fell on Patterson, who was beating the dust from his shorts and tucking his sweat-stained shirt back under the beltline. “What other way in?”

Chapter 69

George sucked air into his lungs in short wheezing breaths as he slowed to a walk before finally stopping completely and bending over, his hands pressed against the insides of his thighs. It didn’t help with the rifle he’d slung awkwardly over his shoulder banging against his ribcage with every step.

Pain seared through his chest, and he winced as he looked up to see Tariq stopping some twenty yards ahead, seemingly unaffected by the gruelling pace that he had set down the rocky terrain.

It took all of his effort to lift an arm and motion him to wait. Tariq squatted down and used the spring in his legs to bounce impatiently up and down as he waited for the Englishman to catch his breath, never once taking his eyes off the road ahead for any sign of danger.

From having accompanied Gail on trips back to Egypt since the discovery of the Library, George knew that they were only one turn away from the foot of the cliff. It wouldn’t do him any good to turn up for what he assumed would be a fierce gun fight if he could hardly breathe. He grunted in amusement as the mental image of him turning up to a battle and having to ask for a quick timeout popped up. It was quickly replaced by fear at the realisation that he was about to turn up to a battle.

The pain in his ribcage had subsided, only to be replaced by a heavy ache that seemed to fill his legs, from the calf up to the thigh, spreading across his groin. He remembered the feeling from school many years earlier, when the PE teacher had forced them to run cross-country in the middle of winter. He had never been a sporty person, and he had always found himself among the stragglers who walked the final couple of miles back to the changing rooms. Arriving late had its drawbacks, especially when it meant missing the first half of the next lesson and being reprimanded by the teacher.

He shook his head and looked up at Tariq. From behind the coloured spots that filled his vision, he could just about make out the Egyptian, who was looking over his weapon, occasionally glancing back at him, while always keeping an eye out for the road ahead.

They couldn’t have been running for more than five minutes, but the relentless pace of the man had been too much for George, and he fought the almost overwhelming desire to topple onto his back and close his eyes. He’d stopped in the shade of the rocky slope to his right, the gentle incline to his left dropping off to what looked like a dried up river bed a dozen or so yards wide before rising up on the other side, creating a U-shaped valley his secondary education told him was formed by glacial displacement, not rivers.

But he couldn’t imagine glaciers round here; maybe the school’s textbook rule didn’t apply to this hot, arid place.

Straightening up, he pulled the AK-47 against his chest with both arms and let his legs propel him gently down the slope until he was standing next to Tariq.

“One more corner,” he said, gesturing towards the track ahead.

Tariq nodded and started walking forwards, covering the final yards at a more cautious pace.

The sound of the gunfight got louder as they neared the bend, and George noted that the predominant sound was the muffled popping of the American weapons, not the harsh crackle of their own AK-47s. His heart sank noticeably, and he stood expectantly a few feet back from Tariq, who took barely two seconds to look round the corner, take stock of the situation, and return to cover.

“Three,” he said with his fingers. He then held up just the index finger. “One of them looks dead, or dying.”

George followed Tariq’s jerky hand signals accompanied by the odd word of English, and understood what they were about to do; Tariq would dart from cover towards the Toyota truck, which was a mere fifteen yards away. George would offer covering fire from his hiding place if required, but if they didn’t turn around, Tariq would fire a warning shot into the rocks when he reached the vehicle. Finally, all being well, George would use his command of the English language to demand and then accept the American surrender.

It seemed like a good enough idea, so he nodded his approval. He particularly liked the fact that if all went according to the plan, he wouldn’t need to fire a single shot. He still didn’t know if his earlier vomiting had damaged the firing mechanism, so he offered the gun to Tariq to check over.

The Egyptian glanced at it briefly and gave a quick thumbs-up.

He checked round the corner one last time, then gave a brief nod towards George and made for the Toyota. George brought his AK-47 up and swung it round the rocks.

They were much higher up than he had imagined, despite Tariq’s best efforts to explain the layout. The two men who were firing over the cliff’s edge were about thirty feet above him, and the third lay motionless on a small ledge a few feet further away. In his peripheral vision, he saw Tariq slide behind the front end of Ben’s Toyota. He regained his footing and took aim at the men, who were still unaware of what was going on behind them.

George could feel the adrenaline coursing through his veins as Tariq completed the outflanking manoeuvre. Without a shot fired, they were now in a winning position behind enemy lines, and he waited for Tariq to fire his warning shot before announcing their demands for surrender.

When the shot didn’t come, he looked quizzically towards Tariq and saw him grappling with his gun. George could only imagine it was jammed, and so making sure he kept Tariq in his line of sight, moved back under cover while he waited for him to un-jam it. As he watched him feverishly taking his rifle apart, it suddenly occurred to him that he was dangerously exposed to the Americans. Despite the cover of the Toyota, he would still be visible if any of the men on the cliff happened to turn round to face the car, due to their elevated position.

Which meant that he would have to provide cover for him.

He felt an odd reluctance to emerge from his hiding place; while he realised it was clearly the right thing to do, the wall of rocks he was leaning against offered him some protection against the raging battle. The internal debate was short lived, and he sucked his gut in before swinging out and aiming directly at the Americans.

“Hey!” he tried to say as he pointed the barrel of the gun at the two men. Unfortunately, his having not said anything loudly for some time together with the effects of the dry atmosphere made the word come out as a croak, like a teetotaller knocking back a shot of whisky. Somehow his voice failed to carry far enough to be heard above the noise of the battle, so he summed up his courage, cleared his throat and tried again.

“Hey, hands –” he was about to say up when the thundering sound of an explosion tore through the air. Moments later, a couple more loud bangs came from the plateau, and he saw a cloud of dust and grit pour over the cliff’s edge and fall down towards him. “Don’t move!” he shouted to the two Americans, who had turned to face him more to shield their eyes from the fallout of the explosion than to question his ‘Hey, hands -’ challenge. “Throw down your weapons!” he added, his voice shaking as he realised the fragility of his position: two heavily armed professionals against him – a quiet Englishman with an antiquated rifle he hadn’t even fired a shot in anger from yet.

The look of surprise on the men’s faces was evident. Standing on the track below was what looked like a tourist, covered in dust. It was only after a second take that they realised he was carrying a weapon, and that it was being pointed straight at them.

“You wanna think real hard about what you’re doing,” the man on the left said. He sported a thick moustache, and an even thicker Texan accent. To show what he thought about George’s ‘ambush’, he levelled his gun at him, and very deliberately took aim. The second man nodded to his colleague before returning to the fight over the top of the cliff, effectively ignoring them both.

Oddly, it wasn’t the thought of Gail needing to be rescued that made him see red, but the wonton disregard for what should have been an unassailable position of authority: him pointing a loaded weapon at two men should have been met by humble resignation, when instead it had been met by pure indifference.

He snarled, aimed for the chest of the Texan, and squeezed his trigger finger to let out a volley of bullets.

But none came. The trigger didn’t budge.

The Texan grinned.

George fumbled for the safety. Surely it had been off!

The Texan pulled his trigger.

A loud crackle came from the Toyota, and the Texan thumped into the cliff wall, spraying bullets as his gun-arm flew sideways. The second man turned just in time to see the barrel of his buddy’s gun pointing into his face, and a fraction of a second later the man’s trigger finger went limp.

He slumped against the cliff, motionless, while his shooting partner cart-wheeled from the ledge and rolled down to the ground, leaving behind a trail of blood and brains.

George clicked the safety off in time to see the two corpses settle into the dust.

And then, almost serenely after what seemed like hours of shooting, the final echo of gunfire dissipated. His hands and forearms were numb from having held the AK-47 upright for so long, and he pulled them down till the rifle was pointing at his feet. His gaze fell on the man who had tumbled to the ground.

The top half of his head was missing.

Of the part that remained, only his bottom lip and chin were recognisable, the rest was covered in blood and fleshy fragments.

He didn’t think there’d be much sick left in him after his earlier episode, but then the human body always had the capacity to catch you by surprise. After he had finished throwing up, he turned and faced the dusty plains that led to the green-belt of vegetation bordering the Nile. A cool breeze came to meet him, bringing with it the smell of the river. The smell of vegetation and oxygen. The smell of life.

Tariq placed a hand gently on his shoulder. For a brief moment, the language barrier between them seemed to dissolve. George looked up at the Egyptian and saw complete understanding in his eyes; understanding that George had seen more death today than ever before, and understanding that for one heart-stopping moment, he had seen his own, too.

Had it not been for the soft click of the magazine loading perfectly into Tariq’s un-jammed AK-47, the Texan would have certainly killed George.

“Hello!” came a shout from the cliff top behind them. They turned in unison and saw Zahra waving down at them, a grim smile on her face. “Thanks for that!” She gestured for them both to come up the cliff, and Tariq helped George to his feet.

They gathered near the smouldering remains of the two 4x4s and a pile of rubble which used to be the gatehouse. Leena had her arm around Manu, whose red eyes came not from the dust but the death of Haji. Tariq stood guard over the one surviving American who sat bound and motionless in the dirt, staring fixedly ahead. According to Zahra, he had run from cover moments before the explosions in an effort to outflank them. Ironically, the daring move had saved his life.

“George,” Zahra said apologetically. “Your wife was with them, and so was Ben. They ran down the stairs just before the explosion destroyed the entrance.”

George looked at the pile of rubble, and instead of replying started to move some of the smaller stones and fragments of breezeblock from the entrance of the Library. It looked a hopeless task.

“George,” Zahra was about to tell him as much, but she was interrupted by a burst of Arabic from Tariq.

Then Tariq was at George’s side, helping him lift a beam that had once been part of the tiled roof. Leena and Manu also joined in, and before long the four of them were fervently clearing rubble in search of survivors.

Zahra took up Tariq’s place guarding the American, who looked on, unmoved.

Chapter 70

Mallus ordered the display off, and the satellite image of Tell el-Amarna vanished. A virtual aquarium appeared in its place, making it look like his office was underwater in some tropical paradise; colourful corals and exotic fish shimmered perfectly under the sunlight that shone down from the virtual surface above.

He gave another command and the cityscape that had soothed his thoughts before Patterson and his men had launched their assault returned.

The assault had failed.

A plane soared silently through the evening sky. He’d seen it all before. He almost whispered at the screen and it switched off completely, blending seamlessly into the wall.

The assault has failed, he thought to himself.

He had no need to launch Plan B, as it was already in motion. On the contrary, while one word from him would call off the vans, no such communication was needed to carry on as planned. Such an act would potentially leave a trail back to him, and for Plan B to work, what was about to happen had to look like it came from outside the United States of America.

“Has it ever really been Plan B?” he mumbled to himself as he shuffled in his seat nervously. He didn’t think so. Deep down inside, he had wanted to see Plan B in action and now, while it was being carried out, he felt a surge of excitement. Another, conflicting part of his mind cried megalomaniac, which he chose to ignore. “This was always meant to be,” he soothed himself. “The Book of Xynutians showed me the way, it’s no coincidence that it fell into my lap!” he started to raise his voice. “What would be the point of me having all of this if it didn’t have a purpose?”

He stood up and started pacing around his desk. The search for answers to the ancient riddles and a possible way of avoiding the wrath of Aniquilus had certainly been fascinating, but ultimately it had done little more than confirm what he already knew.

“I am Aniquilus,” his face lit up as he said the words out loud for the first time, as if some internal flood barrier had finally been breached. Years of pent up emotion started to pour out. “I am Aniquilus,” he laughed. “I am Aniquilus,” he roared, sweeping his arms over his desk sending paper and pen and telephone flying. “And I will rain down fire on this world!”

He barked orders at the computer and the screen lit up, filling with video feeds and streams of text.

For him, secretly having complete control of the country’s defence satellites had more than one advantage. Not only could you spy on whatever you wanted to, such as a covert operation in Egypt, you could also make the Department of Defence see things that simply weren’t there, like unauthorised fighter jets entering US airspace, or a build-up of foreign troops on a disputed border.

You could even make it look like three nuclear Inter-Continental Ballistic Missiles had launched from deep inside Asia towards densely populated targets within the United States of America.

And while the powers that be scrambled to verify and counter the imaginary attack, three very real unmarked utility vans with nuclear bombs inside them would arrive unchallenged in Los Angeles, Chicago and New York.

And so the Apocalypse would begin.

He rounded the desk and made for the door. As he slammed it behind him the lights automatically shut off, and the screen went dark.

Chapter 71

“Wait, no!” Gail exclaimed as Ben approached one of the ancient wooden shelves inside the Library, intent on upending it to examine what lay beneath.

He paused briefly, the time to turn and offer a brief apology; it was more for Gail than for the archaeological world as a whole. Taking hold of the middle shelf, he tentatively rocked it from side to side, to get a feel for its weight and structural integrity. After thousands of years, it was surprisingly solid, offering little give.

Applying more force, he managed to obtain a groan from the thick timber. He stepped back and took in the room as a whole, before turning to the rest of the group.

“What do you think? If we lean on it together it will budge quite easily.”

“And then topple into all the other shelves like dominos!” Gail cried. “Thousands of years perfectly preserved, then destroyed in seconds by us. We have to look for another way.”

“And die in here, for the sake of a few bookcases?” Ben said. “I understand how hard this must be for you, Gail, but if there’s another way out of this place, we have to find it very soon.”

Patterson approached the shelves and gave them a quick nudge. “Bear in mind that even if we do find another way out, the air inside whatever tunnel or room we uncover may be toxic,” he shook his head soberly. “It’ll quickly mix with the little air we have left, and we may simply pass out and die within a few minutes.”

There was a long silence as they digested what he had said. There was no denying the fact that air trapped for thousands of years wasn’t going to be fresh, and there was a strong chance that it would be quite toxic. The air inside the Library was finite, and wouldn’t last them for long if the area it had to fill suddenly became a lot larger.

Eventually it was Walker who broke the silence.

“Not wanting to use up any of your precious air by talking,” he began patronisingly. “But tipping the bookcases over will make a lot of mess, and it won’t uncover your hidden door.”

They turned to him in surprise.

“Oh, and how would you know?” Patterson said sarcastically.

Walker got to his feet, waving away their protests and Ben’s raised gun barrel with the back of his hand. He sauntered over to the circular entrance to the Library.

“You made me climb through a tunnel carved into solid rock to get in here,” he began. “The Ancient Egyptians make that?” Gail shook her head. “No, I guessed not. You lot cut your way in because you couldn’t find the door in the first place. Did you find any bodies in here?” Gail didn’t need to shake her head, she could already see where he was going with his argument. “Not even a dead fly. So the entrance to this damn place remains to be found. But it ain’t just the entrance is it? It’s the exit too.” He turned on his heel and waved his arms around him. “Millions of years ago –”

“Thousands,” Gail cut in.

“Whatever! It don’t matter if it was yesterday, personally, I don’t give a damn. Thousands of years ago some guy closed the door on this place for the last time. Are you suggesting,” he pointed at Ben, “that when he closed it, he somehow managed to build a bookshelf on top of it?” he flapped his arms and jutted his jaw out at him. “And you can stop pointing my own gun at me for a start. You think I’m gonna try and stop you escaping from here? This is my funeral too.”

Ben looked back at him, but was reluctant to lower the pistol. Somehow, he didn’t believe Walker was harmless at all, even if they were in the same boat.

“He’s right, of course,” Gail said matter-of-factly. “If there’s a door, it won’t be under the shelves. They were stacked with parchments and scrolls when we came in here. Even if they did somehow slide into place when the Egyptians left, it would have been difficult not to drop something on the floor.”

“So where is it then?” Ben said desperately. “There’s nothing else in here! No gaps or grooves in the wall we can prise open, the only other feature in the whole place is the plinth.”

They all looked to where he was pointing. It was the structure that Gail had originally seen on the x-ray screen all those years ago. It protruded from the floor, its top tilted with a lip at the bottom edge, in which had sat the books of Aniquilus and Xynutians. Roughly three feet wide and two feet deep at its base, it sat in an alcove at one end of the rectangular room, the bookcases lined up in front of it like pews in a church.

Walker was already there, inspecting the base of the plinth. Gail joined him, despite Ben’s best efforts to stop her from going near the man who barely half an hour earlier wouldn’t have hesitated in shooting them all.

“It’s a separate stone from the floor,” she told him. “We know that much already.”

He grunted in reply, then looked up at her. “No drawings of Egyptian things and cats and shit? I’ve seen all the adventure movies, there’s always some writing somewhere that someone leans on, then the secret passage opens up; hey sesame.”

“This isn’t a movie,” she said bitterly. “Yes, there are usually inscriptions inside Egyptian tombs and monuments, but not in this one. The only recurring symbol is the stickman – Aniquilus.”

“Aniqui who?” Ben asked, surprised at hearing the name for the first time.

“It’s a long story,” she said dismissively. “Anyway, there are no other hieroglyphs in here. We’ve always focussed our research on the literature that we found, the contents of the bookcases rather than the structure itself. I mean, how many times do you check the walls out when you go to your local library?”

“My local what?” Walker joked. He stood up laboriously and looked at Ben. “If there’s one thing we should try knocking over, it’s this.”

No one disagreed, and soon they were pushing with all their might to try and topple it sideways.

It remained solidly in place.

They tried again from the other side, with the same results. After a few minutes, even Walker conceded that the plinth wasn’t going anywhere.

“Could we lift it?” Patterson suggested.

“Bit of a heavy trapdoor isn’t it? How would they have dropped it in place behind them?” Ben commented.

“Fill the space underneath with sand and then take the sand away slowly from below,” Walker said, as if it was the simplest thing in the world. “But then we have the same problem: how’d the last person get out?”

They stood looking at the plinth for several long minutes.

“In any case,” Patterson said finally, “whether it was dropped in behind them or slid across, I don’t see how they could have done it. It’s too heavy and it would have left marks all over the floor if it was dragged, and there are no signs of anything like that.”

Gail sat down and leant against the back of the alcove, exasperated. Letting her head thud against the cold stone, she buried her face in her hands and groaned. “What’s the use? We’ve been down here nearly an hour, and we’re already running out of air. Our only hope is that someone up there digs us out.”

Ben got up onto the plinth, so that he was leaning against the book holder, his backside wedged into the lip that originally stopped the books from falling to the floor.

Gail gave him a disapproving look, then shook her head and closed her eyes.

“What?” he said. “I’m sorry Gail, but we’re going to die down here, the last of my worries is damaging the –”

“Ben, shut up!” she said suddenly, sitting bolt upright, her eyes wide open.

“Oh great! First I’m not allowed to –”

“No seriously, Ben, shhh!” she put her finger to her lips and everyone listened: somewhere beneath the floor, a rumbling had started, like the rolling of a bowling ball making its journey down to the pins.

Then there was the muffled sound of something clicking into place, followed by silence.

After waiting a few seconds longer, Gail got to her feet and pressed her ear against the back wall of the alcove.

“Whatever it was, it didn’t do much,” she said, disappointed. “When you sat on the plinth you must have set off the first part of some mechanism, but over the centuries whatever function it had has probably rotted away.”

They all returned their attention to the plinth, but despite Walker, Patterson and Ben pressing down on it together as hard as possible, nothing further happened.

Gail turned and kicked the wall hard, swearing both out of frustration and pain for having kicked the stone with soft shoes. As she crouched down to nurse her toes, the distinctive grating of stone against stone filled the room, and before her eyes the entire back wall of the alcove slid downwards, revealing a long corridor, the end of which was so far away the lights in the Library left it in darkness.

The air from both spaces mixed in a cloud of dust where they stood, causing more than one of them to cough. But despite their original concerns, the air remained breathable. Walker took a couple of steps forwards, crossing the threshold of the corridor by stepping over the half-foot of door still protruding from the floor.

“How the hell would that work? That stone is over a foot thick, and must weigh tons,” he said, amazed.

“You said it yourself,” Patterson answered. “Put the stone on a load of sand. When the mechanism is activated, in this case probably a ball or roller of some description taking a series of pins or plugs with it as it goes, sand pours out of holes, and the door slides down.”

“But instead it got stuck and didn’t budge, while the sand poured out underneath it,” Gail continued. “That kick was all it needed to start falling down. It was a pretty tight fit!” She was inspecting the gap between the wall and the groove into which it had been placed.

They all walked into the passage, with the exception of Gail, who continued to examine the doorway.

“Wait, this raises more questions than it answers.”

“Who cares?” Walker said, striding forwards into the tunnel. “It’s not like we have all the time in the world, is it?”

“No, seriously, this is important,” she insisted. “If this door opened from inside the Library, then whatever lies beyond this door must be further away from the original entrance. We’ve found a way to get deeper into the tomb, or whatever this is, but we haven’t found the original way into the Library.” They were all staring at her, even Walker. She tried to put it as simply as she could: “If we go down there, we’re getting further away from the outside world.”

Ben broke first, visibly agitated. “So what do we do, ignore this entrance and keep looking for another one? And what if we do find the original way in to the Library, and it actually just takes us back to the stairs that are filled with rubble? What if that was the original entrance, but we simply didn’t take the time to find the original door?”

“Makes sense to me,” Walker nodded.

“Oh, and now you’re the archaeologist are you?” she targeted him vehemently. “A little while ago you were killing people and threatening to kill us too, but now you want to go down there like Indiana Jones and find some hidden treasure while we wait to be rescued, or worse, wait to die?”

Patterson and Ben took a step away from Walker, as if Gail’s comments had suddenly reminded them who he was.

“No,” he replied calmly. “But we’re not getting out through the stairs, and there ain’t no books to read in this so called library of yours, so I thought it’d be best to have a look round and see what else there was to do. And while I’m at it, if I come across another exit, I’ll let you use it too,” he said with mock gallantry.

Before she could say anything, he had turned on his heels and was striding down the corridor into the gloom. Before he was completely in the dark, they saw him rummaging in his chest pocket, and a light came on in front of him. As they watched, the light grew smaller and smaller.

Patterson coughed. “Well, he has a torch, and we don’t. So I vote we go with him.”

Gail held back, and Ben looked at her in earnest.

“Gail, I hate to say it, but he’s right; there’s no reason to stay here, and besides, we shouldn’t let him out of our sight. He could still be planning something.”

She thought about this for a moment before conceding. “Alright, but I’m only going with you because I want to make sure that whatever we find gets treated with respect. This is now officially an archaeological dig, so I’m in charge.”

They walked along in silence for a few yards.

“Do you kick all of your archaeological digs?” Patterson said quietly.

Ben suppressed a laugh and while Gail pretended to ignore him, the darkness made it much easier for her to hide a smile.