Area 51

CHAPTER 3

“I don’t know what’s wrong with this thing,” the graduate student said, twisting knobs and adjusting controls on the machinery in front of him. The sound of his shrill voice echoed off the stone walls and slowly died out, leaving stillness in the air.

“Why are you so sure there’s something wrong with the machine?” Professor Nabinger asked in a quieter voice.

“What else could be causing these negative readings?”

The student let go of the controls of the magnetic resonance imager that they had carried down here, with great effort, into the bowels of the Great Pyramid.

The effort had taken two forms: in the past twenty-four hours the actual physical effort of carrying the machine through the narrow tunnels of the Great Pyramid of Giza down to the bottom chamber and, for a year prior, complex diplomatic effort to be granted permission to bring the modern equipment into the greatest of Egypt’s ancient monuments and turn it on.

Nabinger knew enough about the politics of archaeology to appreciate the opportunity he was being given to use this equipment here. Of the original seven wonders of the ancient world the three pyramids on the West Bank of the Nile were the only one still standing, and even in ancient times they were considered the greatest of the seven. The Colossus at Rhodes — which most archaeologists doubted had even existed as reported — the hanging gardens of Babylon, the Tower of Babel, the Tower of Pharos at Alexandria, and other reported marvels of early engineering had all disappeared over the centuries. All but the pyramids, built between 2685 and 2180 B.C. They were weathered by the sand long before the Roman Empire even rose, were still there when it fell, centuries later, and were standing strong as the second millennium after Christ’s birth approached.

Their original face of hand-smoothed limestone had long ago been plundered — except for the very top of the middle pyramid — but their bulk was so great that they had escaped most of the ravages of the wars that had swirled around them. From the Hyksos invasions from the north in the sixteenth century B.C. to Napoleon, to the British Eighth Army in World War II, the pyramids had survived them all.

There were over eighty pyramids still standing in Egypt, and Nabinger had seen most of them and explored their mysteries, but he was always drawn back to the famous trio at Giza. As one came up on them and viewed the three, the middle pyramid of Khafre appeared to be the largest, but only because it was built on higher ground. The Pharaoh Khufu, more popularly known as Cheops, was responsible for the building of the greatest pyramid, farthest to the northeast. Over four hundred feet tall and covering eighty acres, it was by far the largest stone building in the world.

The smallest of the three was that of Menkaure, measuring over two hundred feet in altitude. The sides of all three were aligned with the four cardinal directions and they went from northeast to southwest, from largest to smallest. The Great Sphinx lay at the foot of the middle pyramid — far enough to the east to also be out in front of the Great Pyramid, off the Sphinx’s left shoulder.

The pyramids drew tourists and archeologists and scientists and evoked awe among all. For the tourist the size and age were enough. For the scientist the exact engineering defied the technology of the time in which they were built. For the archaeologist not only was the architecture amazing, but there was the unsettling question of the purpose of the buildings. That was the question Nabinger had struggled with for years, not content with the answers offered up by his colleagues.

They were commonly assumed to have been tombs for the pharaohs. But the problem with that theory was that the sarcophagus discovered inside of each of the pyramids had been found empty. For years that had been blamed on the plundering of grave robbers, until sarcophagi with the lids still on and the seals on those lids still intact were found, and they were empty also.

The next best theory, and one that logically followed the previous one, was that perhaps the pyramids were cenotaphs, funeral memorials, and the bodies had secretly been buried elsewhere to prevent the graves from being plundered.

A more recent theory took a totally different approach.

There were those who postulated that, to the Egyptians, the finished pyramid was not so important as the process of building; that the purpose of their construction was a desire by ancient pharaohs to employ and draw together their people during the annual three months the Nile flooded and agricultural work came to a standstill. Idle hands led to idle minds that could possibly think thoughts the pharaohs would not have approved of. So, this theory went, the pharaohs placed ten-ton blocks of stones in those idle hands.

Another theory favored by the more optimistic traditionalists was that the final resting place of the pharaohs in the pyramids had not been discovered yet. It was perhaps hidden deep in the bedrock underneath the massive stone structures. There were many theories, but none had yet been proven. It was a search to discover and prove the purpose of the pyramids that drew Peter Nabinger to them every year for six months. The leading Egyptian expert at the Brooklyn Museum, he had been coming here for twelve years.

Nabinger’s area of expertise was hieroglyphics: a form of writing using figures or objects to represent words or sounds. His philosophy was that the best way to understand the past was to read what people of the time had to say about their own existence, rather than what someone digging up ruins thousands of years later had to say.

One thing Nabinger found most fascinating about the pyramids was that if they had not been there now, in the present, for everyone to see, it was doubtful anyone would believe they had ever existed, because of the almost total lack of reference to them in ancient Egyptian writings. It was almost as if Egyptian historians of years gone past had assumed everyone would know about the pyramids and therefore there was no need to talk about them. Or, Nabinger sometimes suspected, maybe even the people of the time of the pyramids’ building weren’t quite clued in themselves as to the reason they were being built. Or maybe, Nabinger also wondered, maybe it had been forbidden to write about them?

This year he was trying something different, in addition to his main project of recording all the writing and drawings on the interior walls of the Great Pyramid. He was using the magnetic resonance imager, the MRI, to probe deep underneath the structures where the eye could not go and physical excavation was prohibited. The waves emitted by the imager could safely invade the depths and tell him if there were more buried wonders. At least that was the theory. The practice, as his graduate assistant Mike Welcher was pointing out to him, was not living up to the anticipation.

“It’s like”—Welcher paused and scratched his head—“it’s like we’re being blocked by some other emission source. It’s not particularly powerful, but it is there.”

“For example?” Nabinger asked, leaning back against the cool stone walls of the chamber. Despite all the time he’d spent inside the pyramid over the years, there was still a feeling of oppression in here, as if one could sense the immense weight of stone pressing down overhead.

Nabinger was a tall, heavyset man, sporting a thick black beard and wire-rimmed glasses. He wore faded khaki, the uniform of the desert explorer. At thirty-six he was considered young in the field of archaeology and he had no major finds to stake his reputation upon. Part of his problem, he would readily acknowledge to his friends back in Brooklyn, was that he had no pet theory that he desired to pursue.

He only had his pet method, searching for new writings and trying to decipher the volumes of hieroglyphics that still remained untranslated. He was willing to accept whatever they yielded, but so far his efforts had not turned up much.

Schliemann might have been convinced that Troy actually existed and thus spent his life searching for it, but Nabinger had no such convictions. Nabinger’s work on the pyramids was one of detailing what was there and searching for its explanation, an area that was perhaps one of the most heavily studied in the field of archaeology. He had hopes that perhaps he might find something with the MRI, something that others had missed, but he didn’t have a clue as to what. Hopefully, it might be a new chamber with not only whatever was in it, but also new, unseen writings.

Welcher was looking at the readouts. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say we’re getting interference from some sort of residual radiation.”

Nabinger had been afraid of this. “Radiation?” He glanced across the chamber at the group of Egyptian laborers who had helped haul the MRI down here. The head man, Kaji, was watching them carefully, his wrinkled face not betraying a thought. The last thing Nabinger needed was the laborers walking out on them because of the threat of radiation.

“Yeah,” Welcher said. “To prepare for this I worked with the MRI in the hospital and we saw readings like this once in a while. They came up when the reading was affected by X-rays. In fact, the technician told me they finally had to write up a schedule for the machines so they wouldn’t be on at the same time, even though they were on different floors of the hospital and both heavily shielded.”

It was information not widely known, but Nabinger had read reports from earlier expeditions that had used cosmic ray bombardment to search for hidden chambers and passages in the Great Pyramid and their reports had been similar: there was some sort of residual radiation inside the pyramid that blocked such attempts. The information had not been widely disseminated because there was no explanation for it, and scientists didn’t write journal articles about things they couldn’t explain. Nabinger often wondered how many unexplained phenomena went unreported because those who discovered them didn’t want to risk ridicule since there was no rational explanation for their findings.

Nabinger had hoped to have better luck with the MRI because it worked on a different bandwidth from the cosmic-ray emitters. The exact nature of the radiation had never been detailed, so he had not been able to determine if the MRI would be blocked also.

“Have you tried the entire spectrum on the machine?” he asked. They’d been down here for four hours already, Nabinger allowing Welcher to handle the machine, which was his specialty. Nabinger had spent the time painstakingly photographing the walls of the chamber, the bottom of the three in the Great Pyramid. Although extensively documented, some of the hieroglyphics on the wall had never been deciphered.

The notebook in his lap was covered with his scribblings, and he had been centered totally on his work, excited by the possibility that there might be some linguistic connection between some of the panels of hieroglyphics here and newly found panels in Mexico. Nabinger did not concern himself with how such a connection could be, he just wanted to decipher what he had. And so far, a very strange message was being revealed to him, word by laborious word. The importance of the MRI was diminishing with every minute he studied the writings.

A year ago Nabinger had made some startling discoveries that he had kept to himself. It had always been accepted that there were certain panels or tablets of markings at Egyptian sites that were not classical hieroglyphics but appeared to be some earlier picture language called “high runes.” While such sites were few — too few to provide a database sufficient to allow a scientific attempt at translation — enough had been found to cause some interest.

What Nabinger had stumbled across were pictures of similar high runes from a site in South America. After a year of very hard work over the few samples available — combining them with those from Egypt — he believed he had manage to decode a couple of dozen words and symbols. He needed more samples, though, in order to feel comfortable that the little he had achieved was valid. For all he knew, his translation could be totally false and he had been working with gibberish.

Kaji snapped some commands in Arabic and the laborers rose to their feet and disappeared back up the corridor.

Nabinger cursed and put his notebook down. “Listen here, Kaji, I’ve paid—” “It is all right, Professor,” Kaji said, holding up a hand roughened by a lifetime of manual labor. He spoke almost perfect English with a slight British accent — a surprise to Nabinger, who was often exasperated by the Egyptian tactic of retreating behind a pretended ignorance of English to avoid work. “I have given them a break outside. They will be back in an hour.” He looked at the MRI machine and smiled, a gold tooth gleaming in the front of his mouth. “We are not having much luck, yes?”

“No, we’re not,” Nabinger said, used to the strange syntax.

“Professor Hammond did not have much luck with his machines, either, in 1976,” Kaji noted.

“You were with Hammond?” Nabinger asked. He had read Hammond’s report in the archives of the Royal Museum in London. It had not been published due to the failure to discover anything. Of course, Nabinger had noted at the time, Hammond had discovered something.

He had discovered that there was residual radiation inside the pyramids that shouldn’t be there.

“I have been here many times,” Kaji said. “In all the pyramids. Also many times in the Valley of the Kings. I spent years in the desert to the south before the waters from the dam covered it. I have led many parties of laborers and watched many strange things at sites.”

“Did Hammond have any guesses why his machine didn’t work?” Nabinger asked.

“Alas, no.” Kaji sighed dramatically and ran his hand lightly over the control panel of the MRI, getting Welcher’s attention. “Such a machine is expensive, is it not?”

“Yes, it—” Welcher halted as Nabinger shook his head, now partially seeing where this was leading.

Kaji smiled. “Ah, Hammond, he had no readings. His man on the machine, he, too, said radiation. Hammond did not believe it. But the machine, it would not lie, would it?”

He looked at Welcher. “Your machine, it would not lie, would it?” Welcher remained quiet.

“If the machine does not lie,” Nabinger said, “then something must be causing the readings.”

“Or something was once here that still causes the readings,” Kaji said. He turned and headed back toward the other side of the chamber, where a large stone sarcophagus rested.

“The sarcophagus was intact but empty when they broke the seals,” Nabinger said sharply, referring to the first expedition into this chamber in 1951. There had been great excitement over the discovery of the chamber and particularly of the sarcophagus found inside with its lid still intact and sealed. The mystery of the pyramids was about to be solved, it was thought at the time. One could imagine the dismay when the seals were broken and the lid was opened, and there was nothing in the stone box.

The interior of the Great Pyramid contained three chambers. One entered the pyramid either through the designed polar entrance on the north side, or one blasted just below that by a caliph in later centuries. Both linked up with a tunnel that descended through the masonry and into the rock beneath the pyramid. That tunnel ended in an intersection hewn out of the rock where two tunnels branched off. One headed up to the middle chamber and the Grand Gallery, which led to the upper chamber. The other, more recently discovered tunnel headed down into the bedrock to the lower chamber. It was the lower chamber that Nabinger and his crew were presently working in.

“I was here in 1951,” Kaji said. “Yes, the sarcophagus was empty then.” “Then?” Nabinger repeated. He’d worked with Kaji before at other sites and the man had always been honest.

When he’d first hired the old man years ago, Nabinger had checked with several others in the field and Kaji had come highly recommended.

“Hammond, he thought me an old fool, and I was young then,” Kaji said. “I am older now. I tried to talk to him, but he did not wish to talk.” Kaji rubbed the fingers of one hand lightly in the palm of the other.

Nabinger knew what that meant. Kaji wanted to be paid for his information, as Nabinger had suspected, but that was only natural. The professor thought furiously. He had rented the portable MRI. The contract was billed by day of use, and he had enough funds from the museum for eight days of use. If he air-shipped it back tomorrow, he would save five days of billing. That was a substantial amount of money, at least from an Egyptian standpoint. The only problem was explaining his receipts and billing forms to the accountant back at the university. But there was no sense in continuing to use a machine in a place where it yielded no information. He also considered the runes he was deciphering in this chamber. Those alone would make the expedition worthwhile. The MRI had been a long shot anyway.

Nabinger looked at Welcher. “Take a break.”

Welcher left the chamber, leaving the two men alone.

“Ten thousand pounds,” Nabinger said.

Kaji’s face was expressionless.

“Twelve thousand and that is all I have.” Nabinger knew that was over a year’s salary to the average Egyptian.

Kaji held out his hand. Nabinger reached into his pocket and pulled out a wad of bills, the week’s wages for the laborers. He would have to go to the bank and draw on the expedition account to pay them now.

Kaji sat down cross-legged on the floor, the money disappearing into his long robe. “I was here in 1951 with Martin’s expedition when they opened this chamber, but it was not the first time I was in this chamber.”

“Impossible!” Nabinger said sharply. “Professor Martin broke through three walls to get into here in 1951. Walls that were intact and dated. The seals on the sarcophagus were the originals with four dynasties marked—”

“You can speak impossible all you like,” Kaji continued in the same quiet voice, “but I tell you I was in here before 1951. You have paid for my story. You may listen or you may argue, it matters not to me.”

“I’ll listen,” Nabinger said, beginning to think he had just wasted quite a bit of the museum’s money and wondering if he could make it up by skimping elsewhere on the expedition fund. His mind automatically began figuring the exchange rate on the pound to dollar.

Kaji seemed satisfied. “It was nine years before Martin’s expedition, during the Second World War. In 1942 the British ruled here in Cairo, but many were not happy with that. The Egyptian nationalists were willing to trade one set of rulers for another, hoping that somehow the Germans would be better than the British and grant us our freedom. In reality we did not have much say in the process. Rommel and the Afrika Korps were out to the west in the desert and many expected him to be here in the city before the end of the year.

“It all began in January of 1942 when Rommel began his offensive. By June, Tobruk had fallen and the British were in retreat. They were burning papers in the Eighth Army headquarters here in Cairo in preparation to run. They were all afraid. And Rommel kept coming. The British army fell back on El Alamein.

“I was working in Cairo,” Kaji said, waving his hand above his head. “Even in the middle of war there were those who wished to view the ancient sights. The pyramids have seen many wars. There were many people for whom the war was a fine opportunity to travel and make money. I gave tours above. And sometimes, if the person paid enough so I could bribe the Egyptian guards, I took them inside. Many wanted to see the Grand Gallery,” he said, referring to the massive passageway hundreds of feet above their heads that had twenty-eight-foot ceilings and led up to the center of the pyramid and the uppermost chamber.

Kaji spread his hands. “I cared not who ruled Cairo. The pyramids have seen many rulers and they will see many in the future. And the pyramids and the other sites, they are my life.

“The Germans were only a hundred and fifty miles away and it looked as if they could not be stopped. In early July, General Auchinleck was relieved and Churchill sent a general named Montgomery to relieve him. No one thought much of it here. It was assumed the British would fall back to Palestine, where they would block the canal with sunken ships, and the Germans would get Cairo.

“That was when I was approached by a party wanting to go inside this pyramid. They spoke strangely, but they paid well, which was all that counted. I bribed the guards and we entered, using the caliph’s entranceway late at night, which was also strange.

“We moved through the descending corridor until we linked up with the original ascending tunnel leading to the Grand Gallery. But they did not want to go up, nor did they want to go to what we now call the middle chamber, but was then called the lower chamber. They had paper with them with drawings on it.” Kaji pointed at the walls.

“I did not get to look at it for very long, but the writing was very much like that on these walls. The symbols that cannot be read.” His eyes turned to the notepad in Nabinger’s lap. “Perhaps you are starting to understand those symbols?”

“Who were these men?” Nabinger asked, flipping the notepad shut. “They were Germans,” Kaji replied.

“Germans? How could they have gotten into Cairo? The British still held the city.”

“Ah, that was the easy part,” Kaji replied. “Throughout the war Cairo was one of the major centers for espionage, and all sorts of people came and went freely.” Kaji’s voice became excited as he remembered. “Cairo was the place to be in World War II. All the whores worked for one side or the other or many times both. Every bar had its spies, most also working for both sides. There were British spying on Germans who were spying on Americans who were spying on Italians and around and around.” Kaji chuckled.

“There were fortunes made on the black market. It was no trouble for the Germans to send these men into Cairo. Especially that July when everyone was more concerned about preparing to flee or how to ingratiate themselves with the invaders than about strange groups of men moving in the dark.”

“Where did the Germans get their drawings from?” Nabinger asked.

“I do not know. They used me to get inside only. From there they took charge.” Nabinger asked the question closest to his heart. “Did they know how to read what they had?”

“I do not know,” Kaji repeated, “but they had someone with them who could understand it in some manner, that was for certain. There were twelve of them. We went to the dip, where the tunnel turns and heads up toward the Grand Gallery, and halted. They searched and then began digging. I became frightened and upset then. I would be blamed, because the guards knew me and knew that I was leading this party in. They were destroying my livelihood with their picks and shovels.

“The German in charge”—Kaji paused and his eyes lost their focus—“he was an evil man. I could see it all about him and especially in his eyes. When I complained he looked at me, and I knew I was dead if I opened my mouth again. So I stayed silent.

“They worked quickly, digging. They knew exactly what they were doing because inside of an hour they broke through. Another passageway! Even through my fear I was excited. Nothing like this had happened in my lifetime or many lifetimes before me. This passageway led downward, toward the ground beneath the pyramid. No one had ever thought of that before. No one had ever considered if there was a passage into the ground. They had always searched for ways to go up.

“They went into it and I followed. I did not understand what they were saying but it was easy to see they were excited also. We came down the tunnel”—Kaji pointed behind him—“as you and I did earlier today. There were three blockages set up in the passageway. I could see the original writings on the walls and knew we were entering parts that had not been seen by a living man in over four thousand years. They tore through the blocking walls as quickly as possible, leaving the rubble behind.

“The tunnel ended in stone, but the Germans didn’t let that stop them as they had not let the three other walls stop them. They used their picks and broke through. And then we were in here. And the sarcophagus was there just like you see it in the pictures of Martin’s expedition, with the lid on and the seals intact. In the air I could feel the presence of—” Kaji paused and Nabinger blinked. The old man’s voice had drawn him in, the effect magnified by being in the very room he was talking about.

Kaji looked at the center of the floor where the sarcophagus had once been. “The Germans were not archaeologists. That was certain. The way they broke through the walls showed that. And the fact that they broke the seals and lifted the lid. In 1951 Martin took six months before his men opened the lid, carefully detailing every step of the operation. The Germans were into it in less than five minutes after entering. They were interested in nothing but the sarcophagus. Not the writings on the walls here, not the seals. Nothing but the stone box.”

“Was it empty?” Nabinger asked.

“No.”

Nabinger waited, then could wait no longer. “Did they find the pharaoh’s body?”

“No.” Kaji sighed and all the energy seemed to drain out of his body. “I don’t know what it was that they found. There was a box inside the stone. A box of black metal. Metal such as I had never seen before nor have seen since.” He gestured with his hands, indicating a rectangle about four feet high by two in breadth and width. “It was this size.”

Nabinger shook his head. “This is all a story, Kaji. I think you have taken my money for a story that is a lie.”

Kaji’s voice was calm. “It is not a lie.”

“I’ve seen the pictures Martin took. All the walls were intact. The seals on the sarcophagus were intact and the original ones. How do you explain that if these Germans did what you said? How did the walls get put back up? The seals put back on? Magic? The pharaoh’s ghost?” Nabinger was disgusted.

“I am not sure,” Kaji admitted. “I do know, though, that the Americans and the British sealed off the Great Pyramid for eight months in 1945, while the war was ending. No one could go in. Maybe they put everything back. It would have been difficult but possible. When I went down with Martin all the walls were back up as you say. It made me wonder, but I knew I had seen them broken through earlier.”

“Why didn’t you tell Martin?” Nabinger asked.

“I was just a laborer then. And he would not have believed me, as you do not believe me now.”

“Why are you telling me?”

Kaji pointed at Nabinger’s notebook. “Because you are interested in the special writings that no one can read. The Germans had those writings. That is how they found the chamber.”

“This makes no sense,” Nabinger exclaimed. “If the Germans came in here and ransacked the chamber, then why would the Americans and British cover it up?” Kaji remained silent.

“Ah!” Nabinger threw his hands up in disgust. “There were no Germans in here in the first place. How many times have you sold this story, Kaji? How many others have you stolen from? I tell you, I will not allow you to get away with it.”

“I have not lied. I was here.” He reached inside his robe and pulled out a dagger.

Nabinger started, thinking for a second he had pushed the old man too far, but Kaji held it by the blade, offering the handle. Nabinger carefully took it.

“I stole that off one of the Germans. They all wore them.”

Nabinger felt a chill as he looked at the handle. A miniature, very realistic ivory skull was at the end, and swastikas were carved into the bone handle along with the lightning bolts that indicated the infamous SS. He wondered what animal the bone had come from, then decided that was information he was better without. The gleaming steel was intricately detailed. Nabinger squinted — there was something written there. There was a word on the one side:

and on the other side a name:

Nabinger had heard of Thule. A place of legend, written about by Ptolemy and other ancient geographers as the northernmost inhabitable land, north of Britain. He had no idea what that had to do with the Nazis or the pyramids.

“Who was Von Seeckt?” Nabinger asked.

“He was the strange one in the group,” Kaji said. “Ten of the twelve were killers. I could tell by their eyes. Two were different. One was the man who read the symbols and pointed the way. Two of the killers guarded him always. As if he was not there of his own free will.

“The second man: Von Seeckt — which is why I stole only from him — he was different also. He was not one of the killers but he wanted to be there. He was very excited when they found the black box. That was when I was able to take the knife. They gave him the box and he put it in a backpack. He carried it with him when they left. It looked heavy, but he was a strong man.”

“That is all they wanted?” Nabinger asked. “Just that black box?”

“Yes. As soon as they had it we went back out. They had a truck waiting and drove away to the north. I ran and hid. I knew the guards would look for me when they found the broken walls and the empty chamber. But they never came for me. I never heard a word, which was strange also.”

Nabinger held on to the dagger. “How do I know you didn’t get this on the black market? It does not prove your story.”

Kaji shrugged. “I know it is true. I do not care if you believe it is true. I am at peace with Allah. I have told the truth.” He pointed at the MRI. “I was reminded to tell you this story because when the Germans opened the sarcophagus and pulled out the box, the man I stole the dagger from had one of those”—Kaji paused as he searched for the word—“a small machine that made noise when he pointed it at the big black box. It chattered like a locust.”

“A Geiger counter?” Nabinger asked.

“Yes. That is what I have heard it called.”

“The black box was radioactive?” Nabinger said, more to himself than Kaji. Nabinger looked at the Egyptian, who returned his gaze levelly. Although there was no logical reason to believe the old man, for some reason Nabinger did. What had been sealed in the sarcophagus? What had the ancient Egyptians possessed that was radioactive?

There was no doubting that the MRI was picking up some form of residual radiation.

Nabinger sorted the story out in his mind. There was only one clue to pursue: the name on the dagger. Von Seeckt. Who was — or probably more appropriately — who had he been?

“What are you doing?” Kaji asked, as Nabinger tucked the dagger into his waistband.

“I am keeping this,” Nabinger said. “I paid for your story and this is the only proof.”

“I did not agree to that,” Kaji said.

“Do you wish me to tell your men of your deal? Of the money I just gave you?” Nabinger asked. “They would want their share.”

Kaji eyes narrowed. Then he stood and shrugged. “You may keep it. It is an evil thing. I should have gotten rid of it long ago.”