Pharaoh

10

Jack Howard followed Hiebermeyer and Costas along the ridge from the sangar, towards the site where they had seen the sculpted head of the pharaoh Senusret beside the square structure of the shrine that had been revealed in the excavation. It was mid afternoon, and despite being November, it was still hot enough to send rivulets of sweat down his face and make a dive in the Nile seem more appealing by the minute. He could see the figure of a woman on top of the shrine, picking her way slowly around, squatting down to inspect something more closely. Below her in the wadi, a Jeep with a child seat strapped into the front passenger side was parked up against the ridge. A young man was leaning against the bonnet, smoking and talking on a phone. He saw them, pushed off and waved languidly, a holstered side arm clearly visible by his side.

Jack waved back. ‘A bodyguard?’

‘Aysha’s cousin,’ Hiebermeyer replied. ‘He’s just finished his national service in Egypt, and was at a loose end. His military police unit was stationed at the frontier and liaised closely with the Sudanese border guards, so there was no problem getting him a temporary permit to carry a firearm in Sudan.’

‘You expecting trouble?’ Costas asked.

Hiebermeyer shrugged. ‘You can’t be too careful. There’s always been a bandit problem in the desert and there’s a growing fundamentalist presence in Sudan. The bandits think any excavation is after gold, and the fundamentalists get itchy over anything they think might disturb Islamic history. Aysha’s cousin may be a one-man show, but the Sudanese police helicopter squadron at Wadi Halfa is only half an hour away.’

They walked towards Aysha, who saw them and waved. Jack always relished spending time with her, not only for her sharp intelligence but also because she seemed to have walked straight out of the past; she had a face like one of the lifelike portrait plaques of the Hellenistic period found on mummies in the Faiyum, where Hiebermeyer had first met her. She was wearing a man’s keffiyeh headdress, a loose white long-sleeved shirt and a long skirt, but with robust desert boots and a workman’s belt with pockets and loops for tools. On her front was a swaddled bundle attached by cords around her waist and over her shoulders. Costas surged forward and peered at the face just visible beneath the protective sunshade at the front. ‘How’s my favourite small person?’ he asked.

‘Ahren’s fast asleep,’ Aysha said. ‘He’ll sleep for another hour, and then be bright and perky all night.’

‘This is his first taste of an archaeological excavation,’ Hiebermeyer beamed.

Jack smiled at Aysha. ‘I was with Maurice at Heathrow when he bought him some blocks to build a model of an ancient Egyptian temple.’

‘Correction. Maurice bought Maurice some blocks to build a model of an ancient Egyptian temple. It was the centrepiece of the excavation tent until our lovely son brought it tumbling down.’

‘Earning his archaeological credentials,’ Hiebermeyer said proudly. ‘Far more interested in ruins than standing structures. That’s my boy.’

Aysha walked carefully over to an awning on one side of the shrine, and sat down on a folding chair. The others joined her. Jack, who had been thinking hard since seeing the evidence from 1884 in the sangar, glanced at Hiebermeyer. ‘Do you remember I promised to look out some material I had in the Howard family archive related to the Gordon relief campaign?’

Hiebermeyer looked at him keenly. ‘Your ancestor, the Royal Engineers officer?’

Jack nodded. ‘My great-great-grandfather, Colonel John Howard. He wasn’t part of the expedition, but he was in charge of a committee at the Royal Engineers headquarters at Chatham that looked after Gordon’s collection of antiquities. Howard passed through Egypt in March 1885 on his way back home from India, and picked up a crate of material in Cairo that had been sent down from the Sudan. I know it contained some archaeological finds that Gordon had dispatched from Khartoum the previous year, including ancient Egyptian artefacts from the desert. Those mostly went to the Museum of the Royal United Services Institute in London, and when that was disbanded in the 1960s they were dispersed around various museums in England.’

‘You told me there was some material related to Semna.’

Jack nodded. ‘Just two envelopes, in the collection of his private papers that I have in that old wooden sea chest in my office on Seaquest II. But it’s frustrating because both are empty. One has the sender’s address as “River Column, Semna”, dated the twenty-fourth of December 1884, and is from Lieutenant Peter Tanner, a sapper friend of Howard’s from his time in India. I know they shared an interest in archaeology, and I’ve always imagined that was what the letter was about. Sadly Tanner was killed in battle alongside General Earle six weeks later, when the river column had its first major engagement with the Mahdi’s army, at Kirbekan, some sixty miles south of here.’

‘And the other?’

‘That one’s a real puzzle. It’s a scuffed brown manila envelope about twenty centimetres across that had once been tied around, as if it had contained something heavy, an object the size of a large floor tile. It’s addressed to Howard at the School of Military Engineering, and was from a sapper in the 8th Railway Company, Royal Engineers. It was posted in May 1885 from a British army field hospital at Wadi Halfa. The 8th Railway Company weren’t meant to be a combatant unit, but they did fight one of the last battles of the campaign, when they were besieged at the fort of Ambikol at the end of the railway line and held off wave after wave of dervish attacks. The sapper must have been badly wounded to have been at that particular hospital. His name was Jones, and I realised I recognised him from his regimental number on the envelope. He’d been a sergeant with Howard in India during the Rampa Rebellion in 1879, and a bit of research showed that he was a corporal with the river column in 1885 before being transferred to the Railway Company. Sometime after that he must have lost his corporal’s stripes and been reduced to sapper, not for the first time in his army career, it seems. It was common for engineer officers and NCOs to have close friendships, as they often worked together for months on end with no other soldiers present. When Jones had been with Howard in the Rampa jungle they made some major archaeological discoveries. That might explain why he chose to send Howard what looks as if it must have been some kind of artefact from the desert.’

‘Is there any chance of following the trail further?’

Jack nodded. ‘The sea chest only contains papers that happened to be among my father’s material when he died. But another couple of boxes of my great-great-grandfather’s papers were found when restoration work was carried out in the attic of the old hall on our estate last year. My grandfather was in serious debt following the Second World War and had to let the house, and it seems that he put a lot of family material into storage in the attic and then forgot to tell anyone about it. I’ve only managed to look through a few boxes so far, but I’ll go straight to it when I get back to the IMU campus after we finish our diving here. The attic is going to be converted to rooms for visiting scholars, and I need to supervise removal of all the material to the library before the end of next week. If Jones’ artefact came from Semna, which seems possible, then maybe it’s something that can shed light on the archaeology of this place. I’d love to go through the whole collection properly, but until now I hadn’t seen myself having the time. A retirement project maybe.’

Hiebermeyer peered at him over his glasses. ‘Retirement? Jack Howard?’

Aysha shifted the baby. ‘Why not put Rebecca on to it? John Howard’s her ancestor too.’

Jack gave her a rueful look. ‘I don’t think family history is her cup of tea. At the moment she’s toying with applying to study theoretical physics at Caltech.’

Aysha waved her free hand dismissively. ‘That’s just an act of rebellion against you. If you told her there was some kind of archaeological trail in those family papers, she’d be on to it like a shot. Remember, I’ve spent weeks sitting beside her in the finds lab cleaning bits of broken pot. I can assure you that she has the Howard genes. Anything to get out of drudgery, and she’ll do it.’

‘Okay. I’ll set it up. But I want to have a look again as well. Especially after having seen this place.’

‘The Royal Engineers played a major part in the development of archaeology out here,’ Aysha said, gently rocking the baby. ‘It’s fascinated me since you first suggested that I study it for my masters dissertation project in London.’

Jack looked at Costas. ‘It’s one of the unsung aspects of the development of archaeology in the Victorian period. One of the main jobs of the Royal Engineers was survey and mapmaking, and in the course of their explorations they laid the groundwork for archaeological research in many areas of the world that came under British influence, including Palestine and Egypt. A lot of them were also keenly interested in Biblical history and archaeology in its own right. That was the period when people were really beginning to put facts behind the timeline and geography of the Bible. The Royal Engineers attracted many men who today might well have become professional archaeologists.’

‘A case in point is Lord Kitchener,’ Aysha said. ‘I made a special study of him because I felt that his role in the archaeology of Egypt had been overlooked. We think of him chiefly as the man who avenged Gordon, who led the British in the reconquest of Sudan and the final victory against the Mahdist army at Omdurman 1898. But in so doing he opened up the whole of the Nubian desert to archaeological exploration, including the first investigations that took place here at Semna. I always felt that if he hadn’t been so obsessed with avenging his hero, he would have been able to carry out more exploration himself in the desert, as that was really his calling.

‘General Gordon is another example. When he was first made governor general of the Sudan in the 1870s, he travelled around the country extensively, accompanied by some colourful European and American characters he’d appointed to his staff. He managed to visit many archaeological sites and amass a large collection of antiquities and ethnographic material. I ended up arguing in my dissertation that if it hadn’t been for Gordon’s insistence on staying to evacuate Khartoum in the face of the Mahdist uprising, then he wouldn’t have died and Kitchener might never have been spurred on his career of reconquest, leaving the archaeology of the Sudan virtually unknown. So in one way or another Gordon is the linchpin of the whole story, and without him we might not be here as archaeologists today.’

‘The Mahdi was the bin Laden of the 1880s, right?’ Costas asked.

‘There was more to him than that,’ Aysha said. ‘For a start, he wasn’t a spoiled rich boy with a whim for jihad that became obsessive. The Mahdi was the real deal, and lived the life he preached. He was a Sudanese boatbuilder with Arab ancestry who became a Sufi holy man. He had visions and was highly charismatic, leading people to think he was a kind of messiah. His followers included many Sudanese tribemen who were disaffected with Ottoman rule and wanted their own freedom; these were the enemy the British and the Egyptians fought, the warriors they called dervishes. The Mahdi died in the same year as Gordon, in 1885, probably poisoned, and his revolt ended with the defeat of his successors at Omdurman in 1898, but he was certainly seen as a role model by bin Laden and his cronies. Growing up as a Muslim in southern Egypt, I can assure you that the influence of the Mahdi’s family and his chosen line of successors remains strong. You do not use his name in vain in this part of Sudan without risking your neck.’

Jack turned to Costas. ‘Gordon was also a Royal Engineers officer. So you can see the link with Kitchener, and with my great-great-grandfather. After the Royal Military Academy they’d all done the same two-year course at the School of Military Engineering at Chatham, and they were a tightly knit corps. And many of them not only had archaeological interests but were also strongly committed Christians, influenced by the evangelical movement. They were most interested in the archaeology of the Holy Land, which for them included Egypt.’

‘And that ties them to the Mahdi as well, especially Gordon,’ Aysha said. ‘Gordon was a real maverick, an iconoclast, not very good at taking orders, something he shared with Kitchener. But in Gordon’s case his iconoclasm extended to his religious views as well. The evangelical movement liked to claim him as one of their own, to see him as a devout crusader who had gone to Khartoum to confront the Islamist threat, but in truth that was far from Gordon’s own attitude. His view of religion was very inclusive, and his focus was on the common tradition from which Islam and Judaeo-Christian beliefs sprang: the same God, many of the same prophets, a similar take on the idea of a messiah. He knew that the Mahdi had visions of Jesus as well as of Muhammad, and that he shared Gordon’s fascination with the Old Testament prophet Isaiah. And both men would have had an interest in Moses, and the origin of the idea of the one God.’

‘Which brings us neatly back to Akhenaten,’ Jack said. He pulled a small paperback book out of the side pocket of his combat trousers and tossed it to Hiebermeyer. ‘Have you ever had a go at reading that?’

Hiebermeyer looked at the cover and raised his eyes knowingly. ‘Moses and Monotheism, by Sigmund Freud. Yes, I have attempted this. A great deal of psychobabble, but the kernel of it contains some sound ideas.’

Jack grinned. ‘I had a look at it on the plane on the way here; I’m glad I’m not the only one who struggled with it.’ He turned to Costas. ‘Freud was putting his own particular spin on the well-established theory that the pharaoh of the Old Testament Book of Exodus was Akhenaten, and that it was he who was associated with Moses and the idea of the one God. This theory gained real bite during the late Victorian period when archaeologists began to understand more about the cult of the Aten, the sun god Akhenaten tried to foist on Egypt at the expense of all the old gods. Because this vision of one God happens to Moses in the Bible as well, Freud toyed with the notion that the two men were really one, that Moses was Akhenaten. Personally I’d discard all that in favour of what you actually read in the Bible, which seems a perfectly plausible picture of a pharaoh and a Hebrew slave sharing the same vision.’

The baby cried, and Aysha quickly undid the cords and passed him to Hiebermeyer, who put down the book and began feeding him with the bottle she gave him, sitting awkwardly but with a beaming smile on his face. ‘I agree with Jack. We’re talking about real people, not some kind of mystical union.’

Costas grinned at him. ‘You’re a hands-on kind of guy, aren’t you?’ The baby coughed, spraying milk over Hiebermeyer’s face and neck, and Costas stiffened, looking past Hiebermeyer’s shoulder. ‘Can you handle a camel as well?’

Hiebermeyer tried to wipe his face on his sleeve, while shoving the bottle back in the baby’s mouth. ‘What do you mean, a camel?’

‘I mean, a camel.’ While they had been talking, the camel that they had first seen from the Toyota had loped over and was now craning its neck down so that its face was directly behind Hiebermeyer, its jaws chewing from side to side and its hooded eyes looking out indifferently, apparently disconnected entirely from the scene. Suddenly its tongue came out and wrapped itself around Hiebermeyer’s face, drooping down over his chest to lick up the milk and then withdrawing again. The animal licked its lips contentedly and backed off with a sigh. Costas guffawed, and Hiebermeyer spluttered, trying to wipe his face again while still holding the baby. Aysha quickly took Ahren from him, and Hiebermeyer got up and stumbled towards an open water barrel behind them, dunking his head inside and shaking it vigorously before returning, sitting this time a good few metres away from the camel. He blinked and wiped away the water, then eyed Costas. ‘Watch it, Kazantzakis. Next time it’ll be you.’

‘That camel’s become the expedition mascot,’ Aysha said. ‘The locals say it’s descended from a camel that was left here by a British officer during the Nile expedition, and that it’s still waiting for him to return. So we feel kind of sorry for it. And it’s taken a particular liking to Maurice.’

‘So I can see,’ Costas said, grinning at Jack.

‘I think it’s time you earned your keep as godfather,’ Hiebermeyer said. He went over to Aysha, carefully took the baby from her and gave him to Costas, whose expression had changed to one of frozen horror. Aysha passed him the bottle, and they all watched for a moment as the baby fed contentedly, his eyes closed.

‘You look as if you were made for it,’ Aysha said, then turned to Hiebermeyer. ‘Have you remembered our visitors?’

Hiebermeyer snorted with annoyance and looked at his watch. ‘I could do without them. When Jack and Costas have gone to kit up, I have to get to the excavation on the other side of the river and make sure everything’s shipshape there too.’

Costas looked dubiously at the river. ‘How do you get there? Swim? Watch out for crocodiles.’

Hiebermeyer shook his head. ‘We took a page out of the 1884 expedition. We rigged a cable across the river just like the ship’s hawsers used by the Royal Naval contingent to haul whaleboats up the Nile. One of those pictures from the Illustrated London News shows a cable laid across those two jutting rocks that formed the narrowest point of the cataract, now completely submerged. I use the one we set up to pull a boat over the pool below us to the other side.’

‘Who’s coming exactly?’ Jack asked.

‘We’re expecting a visit from the Sudanese Ministry of Culture. It’s a scheduled inspection, and I welcome that. Our team here is almost entirely Sudanese and I’d love to see this develop into a permanent programme. Ever since the Aswan dam construction this area has been written off by archaeologists assuming that the interesting sites have all been inundated, but as you can see, there’s a lot still to be found on higher ground above the river. Perhaps the programme could have IMU backing.’

‘I can certainly propose it to the board of directors,’ Jack said. ‘Especially if our dive produces good results.’

‘What I’m apprehensive about is the new guy they’re bringing with them. He’s been specially appointed to increase awareness of recent Sudanese history, especially the Mahdist period. As a historian, I have a lot of sympathy with the idea. The Mahdi was an extraordinary character, and the way in which the Sudanese people rose up in support of him, mainly fighting for their own independence from foreign interference rather than out of religious fanaticism, should be looked on positively as a basis for nation-building today. God knows, this place needs it.’

‘Has there been any progress yet?’ Jack said.

‘Things got off to a bad start when Kitchener desecrated the Mahdi’s tomb after the Battle of Omdurman in 1898; from then until the end of the Anglo-Egyptian regime in 1956, the Mahdist era was not exactly a focus for celebration. Even the period of Gordon’s rule quickly passed out of visible history, because there was so little left to look at and a great desire to sweep away the horror of that time and look ahead. The only significant building to survive the Mahdist destruction of Khartoum, the palace where Gordon was holed up, was demolished after the British returned in 1898. The only substantial other survivals are two of the river steamers that he used to make contact with the advance force of the British on the Nile. The Bordein was restored in 1935, the fiftieth anniversary of Gordon’s death, and was something of a tourist attraction until it fell into disrepair after the British left. One of the new appointee’s first jobs has been to oversee its restoration. He wants it to appear as it did when the Mahdi ruled Khartoum and took over the steamers for his own use.’

‘I’d go along with that,’ Jack said. ‘Virtually all we know of the place during those years of Mahdist rule after 1885 comes from the account of Rudolf von Slatin, the Austrian officer who had been one of Gordon’s staff and later returned under British rule as a special inspector for the Sudan. It is extraordinary that a former boatbuilder from the Nile should have ended up ruling a country three times the size of France, and anything that can be done to put that period into visible history is very worthwhile, in my book.’

Costas knitted his brows. ‘Wasn’t there another steamer, one that was wrecked? I flipped through Jack’s books on the plane on the way here and that caught my interest. Gordon sent one of his officers downstream with a lot of his personal papers and artefacts, but the steamer foundered and the officer was murdered.’

‘Colonel Stewart,’ Jack said. ‘The steamer was the Abbas, wrecked in the fifth cataract, about five hundred kilometres upstream of here, in September 1884. It was the event that really seems to have sent Gordon into a downward spiral.’

Costas turned to Aysha. ‘Has anyone ever dived on it?’

She shook her head. ‘Not to my knowledge. The Mahdi’s men ransacked her and salvaged what they could after Stewart was murdered. They’d been persuaded that there was gold on board, and that’s what the locals still believe. They’re pretty hostile to anyone going near the site. There’s a local warlord who runs the place like a private fiefdom.’

‘Any truth in it?’ Costas asked. ‘The gold?’

‘Gordon wasn’t that kind of treasure-hunter. But he does seem to have sent a good part of his archaeological collection away in the Abbas, and that must still be lying on the riverbed. We thought it might make a good IMU project.’

Costas turned to Jack. ‘What do you think? Sounds like another case of the Beatrice, digging up a nineteenth-century wreck to find ancient antiquities.’

Jack pursed his lips. ‘It’d have to be a pretty big prize for me to go diving at a site guarded by a Sudanese warlord and his private army who might be hankering after reliving the murder of a British officer on the site a hundred and thirty years ago.’

Aysha nodded. ‘I think you’d have to get them on your side.’

Costas turned to Hiebermeyer. ‘Would that project come under the aegis of this new guy? Excavation of the steamer would put that period of history into the limelight, with the added attraction of ancient artefacts. Who knows what kind of things Gordon might have collected.’

Hiebermeyer looked uncertain. ‘I’m keeping my distance. I haven’t told you about this man’s background. He’s not a career politician, but he’s from an immensely wealthy Sudanese family based in Egypt. His father’s side are originally from this part of the Nile in upper Sudan. They claim descent from the prophet Muhammad through his grandson Hassad.’

‘The same as the Mahdi?’ Jack said.

‘The man’s name is Hassid al’Ahmed. His family were boatbuilders, just like the Mahdi’s. He’s never openly claimed a connection, but my contact in the ministry says it’s an unspoken assumption.’

Costas whistled. ‘Now that is living history. Maybe he’s not just intent on celebrating the history of the Mahdi, but is also a jihadist himself.’

Hiebermeyer pursed his lips. ‘You have to ask that question of everyone you meet out here. But I don’t think it’s as straightforward as that. When Aysha and I gave our briefing on the Semna project for the ministry people in Khartoum, I noticed that he seemed completely uninterested and was texting most of the time until I mentioned my particular interest in Akhenaten, when he suddenly pocketed his iPhone and began furiously taking notes. I mentioned this to my ministry friend, and he said that both this man and his father had plagued the ministry with requests to excavate a number of sites up and down the Nile with evidence for ancient Egyptian occupation. They’d been rebuffed because the family had an ugly reputation for treating any project they’d been allowed to develop in the Sudan as their own private enterprise, using bribery to corrupt officials sent to police them. The ministry had been obliged to accept Hassid’s appointment with great reluctance after he’d made a cash donation of thirty million dollars to the Khartoum museum in return for the role. Officially he has nothing to do with ancient sites, but it’s no surprise that he’s managed to shoehorn himself into the inspection today. Ostensibly he’s here to look at the evidence we’ve found from 1884, but I’m sure what he’s really interested in is the pharaonic remains and anything else he might wheedle out of us about ancient Egyptian discoveries. Why he should have that special interest, I don’t yet know.’

He looked at his watch and stood up. Aysha went over to Costas and took the baby, now fast asleep, and sat down again. Hiebermeyer turned to Jack and Costas. ‘I promised to show you how I know that two soldiers died up here that day in 1884. And how that’s led to a fabulous ancient discovery. It’s the reason why you’re here. Aysha, we’ll be back in half an hour. Let’s go.’

11

Hiebermeyer led Jack and Costas from the shrine over about two hundred metres of bare rock towards the beginning of a large gully that opened out into the desert to the east. They dropped a few metres below the level of the surrounding rock and walked towards an off-white tent some fifty metres into the gully, at the end of a dirt track from the main road where several of the expedition vehicles were parked. The tent was the size of a small marquee, with a pitched roof and guy ropes pegged out and anchored against the wind. Hiebermeyer opened the door flap and ushered them inside, where the air was noticeably warmer. ‘It’s something of a greenhouse in here during the day, but it’s the price we pay for keeping the dust out of the excavation,’ he said. They followed him over to a square trench about three metres across and two metres deep, with measuring rods along the sides and a plastic sheet laid over the bottom.

Costas squatted close to the edge of the trench, being careful not to let the loose dust and stone crumble inside. ‘This looks like a crime scene investigation,’ he said. ‘An ancient burial?’

Hiebermeyer nodded. ‘During our preliminary recce Aysha spotted two low piles of rocks about two metres long, evidently man-made. As you’ve seen, the plateau is largely exposed rock – gneiss and granite with some sandstone – and this gully is one of the few collecting places near the river for wind-borne dust and sand, the only place with stable sediment deep enough for a burial. But the two burials we found under the stones weren’t ancient. Beneath that tarpaulin are the semi-mummified remains of two British soldiers.’

Jack stared, his mind reeling. ‘Are they from the Gordon relief expedition?’

‘The khaki uniforms are correct. They have the shoulder badges of the South Staffordshire Regiment, one of the units with the river column. And one of them has a letter from a woman in Dublin in his front tunic pocket, dated early October 1884.’

‘So this is why you think a second soldier was killed in the sangar.’

‘We’ve left the bodies in situ, but did a full forensic analysis. They were clearly both buried at the same time and with some care, undoubtedly by their comrades. One was killed by a single gunshot wound to the upper chest, and probably died immediately. The other, the one with the letter, was hit twice, once in the lower leg and once through both thighs, severing the artery in his right thigh. He probably bled to death in agony.’

Costas stood up and backed away. ‘I don’t want to see.’

Hiebermeyer put a hand on his shoulder. ‘Don’t worry. We’ve reburied them exactly as they were, and we’re about to infill the trench. We’ve arranged that the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, who administer the Khartoum War Cemetery, will take charge of the site. They mainly deal with Second World War casualties from the desert campaign against the Italians and the Germans, but they also have charge of First World War casualties from the war against the Turks as well as any bodies discovered from the 1880s and 1890s. We know the names of these two soldiers from their personal effects, and the Sudanese authorities have allowed the Commission to build a monument at this spot.’

‘So that closes the chapter on that fateful day in December 1884,’ Jack murmured, looking pensively at the tarpaulin.

‘It closes that chapter, but it opens another one,’ replied Hiebermeyer, his eyes gleaming. ‘Just like in the sangar, when they dug down here the soldiers cut through something else, something ancient. They probably thought it was the remains of earlier human burials, but when Aysha and her team removed the surrounding sediment, they found something unexpected. Prepare to be amazed.’ He lifted a flap of canvas dividing off part of the tent beyond the trench, and they stared in astonishment. On a hospital gurney at one end was an intact mummy, the criss-crossed strips of linen clearly visible beneath the hardened resin on the surface. The head was in the form of a stylised mask, with eyes and other features picked out in paint, the colours faded to pastel shades of green and blue and grey. Only it was not the mask of a human being. The mummy was lying on its front, and the head tapered to a snout, jutting out and ringed with painted teeth. Jack whistled. ‘Well I’ll be damned,’ he said. A crocodile.

He gently put a hand on the resin, feeling the warmth where it had absorbed heat from the sun, a disconcerting sensation, as if the mummy were still alive. ‘Is it real? Inside, I mean?’

Hiebermeyer nodded. ‘We took it to the Khartoum School of Medicine for a CT scan. It’s a fully mature adult male Crocodylus niloticus. There was a scarab in part of the wrapping that we unravelled dating to the reign of our friend Senusret III, about 1850 BC.’ Hiebermeyer moved to another hanging curtain. ‘Now, get a hold of this one.’ He pulled the canvas away, and they stared in even greater astonishment. A second gurney held another crocodile mummy, this one in fragments, with only the snout and head and the lower part of the tail intact. But the head was huge, at least twice the size of the first mummy. And instead of painted features, the mask was picked out with gold leaf and encrusted jewels, black stones like jet for the eyes and a beautiful translucent green stone for each of the nostrils. Jack leaned forward and gently touched one of the stones, seeing the reflected light turn his finger a watery green, a shade he had never seen before.

‘The nostril stones are peridot, from St John’s Island in the Red Sea,’ Hiebermeyer said. ‘The Egyptians sailed there specially to mine it. In the sunlight they reflect an amazing beam of light, almost too dazzling to look at.’

‘It’s huge,’ Costas said in a hushed tone. ‘I mean the crocodile. I’ve never seen anything like it.’

‘Despite the richness of the embellishments, it was pretty crudely mummified, and hasn’t survived so well, even taking into account the damage to the torso caused by the British soldiers digging through it,’ Hiebermeyer continued. ‘Our analysis of the wrappings shows that the smaller mummy was encased in linen and papyrus characteristic of the reeds grown along the banks of the Nile in upper Egypt, whereas this one is local desert grass mixed with Nile clay probably from the pool below, as well as scraps of papyrus documents that seem to have been discarded from the fort.’

‘This is where you found the Semna dispatch you read to us earlier?’ Jack said.

Hiebermeyer nodded. ‘The smaller mummy was undoubtedly brought here from Egypt, whereas we’re sure this one is a crocodile that lived here and was mummified on the spot. And yes, it’s big. Huge. The largest known Nile crocs are those recorded in the nineteenth century by European hunters. Maybe there were leviathans among them, but this one now stands as the largest Nile crocodile ever recorded. I sent Lanowski the CT scan and his computerised reconstruction of the bones gives its length. Most fully grown male Nile crocs average about four to five metres. This one is almost nine metres, the size of a bus.’

‘Ibrahim was telling us about local stories of a leviathan in the river here,’ Jack said. ‘This seems to bear them out.’

‘Lanowski calculates the crush strength of the jaw at twenty-five kilonewtons, enough to split a cow in half,’ Hiebermeyer said. ‘But like all crocs, the muscles that open the jaws are weak, and you’d be able to hold them shut if you wrestled it down. Lanowski says the IMU medicos will be particularly interested in the integumentary sense organs on a crocodile of this size, as they may reveal ways of sensing pressure that have applications to diving technology. But you’d have to catch one live.’

Costas stared at him. ‘Don’t even think about it. I’m not acting as fishing bait for one of Lanowski’s experiments. He wants a live crocodile, he can catch it himself.’

Jack gazed back at the trench. ‘What are they doing buried up here, so high above the river?’

‘That was my first question too,’ Hiebermeyer replied. ‘Nile crocs lay eggs in November and December, the time of year when the level of the river was already well down, and yet they instinctively nested above the summer high-water mark in order to prevent their nests being inundated as the river rose again when the eggs were due to hatch. It was the reason why the ancient Egyptians thought crocodiles could foretell the future. They’d choose a sandy spot where they could bury their eggs and stand guard. Where we are now is one of the few locations with any depth of sand close to the cataract, even though it would have meant a lumbering climb for them up the slope. It’s an exposed location, but open on all sides so difficult for anyone intent on stealing the eggs to sneak up unobserved. Given the size of the crocs that lived here, anyone chancing on them would have kept their distance. On open ground like this a croc can move faster than most people can run. In the water, one this big would be even faster, up to forty kilometres per hour in bursts.’

‘I’m glad you used the past tense,’ Costas murmured. ‘Lived, not live.’

‘Don’t be too sure. Absence of evidence isn’t proof of absence. At night our workmen who sleep in the open claim they sometimes hear deep breathing from the pool, a snorting sound.’

‘Oh great,’ Costas muttered. ‘This gets better by the moment.’

‘Do you think there are more mummies here?’ Jack asked.

Hiebermeyer shook his head. ‘You can see the lower courses of a masonry enclosure beside the trench with the soldier burials. We think the two crocodile mummies were buried side by side as offerings, one a tamed crocodile carefully mummified in Egypt, the other an untamed leviathan from this place. Perhaps there was some meaning to the double burial: the one to demonstrate that the priests could subdue the creature, the other to show respect for the primordial beast, here at this place on the very edge of civilisation.’

‘You mention priests,’ Jack said, peering at Hiebermeyer intently. ‘At all the other places where crocodile mummies have been found, they’ve been discovered in large numbers, stashed in temples to the crocodile god Sobek. At Crocodilopolis, for example.’

Costas looked horrified. ‘At where?’

‘Crocodilopolis. Crocodile town. On the Nile near Memphis.’

‘They had a place called that?’

Hiebermeyer snorted impatiently. ‘That’s Jack being Greek again. The ancient Egyptians called it Arsinoe. The priests there kept a crocodile embellished with jewels and gold in a special pool, replacing and mummifying him when he died. They called him Petsuchos.’

‘Petsuchos? You’re kidding me. They kept a pet crocodile?’

‘Not a pet exactly,’ Jack said. ‘More like a personification of a terrifying monster god. I don’t think you stroked it and took it for walks.’

Costas stared at the mummy. ‘I’m beginning to get it. You think the same kind of thing was going on here, don’t you?’

Jack peered at Hiebermeyer intently. ‘The cult of Sobek was always associated with a temple. That’s the one thing missing here. I may be wrong, but I think you have something more to show us.’

Hiebermeyer’s eyes gleamed, and he dropped the flap covering the mummy. ‘Back to the plateau where we started. We should get moving. We haven’t got much time.’

‘One final question,’ Costas said. ‘How did the crocodiles here get so big?’

Hiebermeyer’s phone went off, and he read a text message. He clicked it shut and put it away. ‘That was Aysha. The inspectors have arrived at the opposite bank. Scheisse. They were supposed to come here first. We’re not ready for them yet over there.’ He snorted in annoyance, glanced at his watch and charged out of the tent, then stopped and looked at Costas. ‘Did you say something?’

‘How did the crocodiles get so big?’

Hiebermeyer scratched his chin, looked thoughtfully down and then peered at Costas, a glint in his eye. ‘Oh, human sacrifice, I should imagine.’

‘What? Human sacrifice?’

‘The priests couldn’t do it in the civilised heartland of Egypt, where that sort of thing was a no-no. But I’ve always thought there were those among the Egyptian priests who were itching to do it. Thank God they couldn’t know what the Aztecs used pyramids for, otherwise Giza would have been a bloodbath. But out here, where no one was looking, they could have had a field day. There were all those awkward foreign prisoners of war: Hittites, Canaanites, Hebrews, Nubians. Perhaps even the odd Greek too, as a tasty morsel.’ He eyed Costas mischievously. ‘So instead of summoning up a mythical monster, they create a real-life leviathan. What better way to placate the god than to keep him happily engorged in his pool of death here, rather than letting him go hungry and swim south to bring darkness over Egypt?’

‘Pool of death,’ Costas said miserably. ‘That’s where we’re going diving.’

Hiebermeyer grinned at him. ‘And where it’s been waiting for three thousand years. Pretty hungry by now.’

Costas groaned, and Hiebermeyer strode on ahead. A few minutes later they stood on a rocky plateau about the size of a tennis court overlooking the Nile, just beyond the site of the sangar. Aysha appeared over the ridge and joined them, holding the baby. Jack could see that Hiebermeyer was bursting to tell them what he had found. ‘Well?’

Hiebermeyer pulled a folded sheet out of his pocket. ‘Extra-high-frequency ground-penetrating radar,’ he said, beaming. ‘Another little project with my friend Lanowski, developed for a new search I’m planning in the Valley of the Kings. The new technology can penetrate deeper into rock than ever before, and I’m certain it’s going to give us another find to rival Tutankhamun’s tomb. But this is the first chance I’ve had to try it out for real. And it came up trumps. Big-time.’

He unfolded the sheet and passed it to Jack, his hand shaking slightly with excitement. Jack opened it out, and Costas peered over. ‘Holy cow,’ Costas murmured. ‘There’s something really big down there.’

Jack stared at it, his heart pounding. The printout showed the ghostly image of a square chamber beneath the rock, some twenty metres across. ‘How deep under the surface is this?’ he asked.

‘Our geophysicists agree with Lanowski that the ceiling of the chamber is at least eight metres below ground level. Before you ask, there’s no chance of getting to it from here, at least not without explosives and mining equipment. This whole outcrop is solid pre-Cambrian rock, as hard as iron. It must have taken the ancient Egyptians decades to dig out that chamber.’

‘You’re sure it’s that old?’

‘I’m certain of it, Jack. You said it: there’s one thing missing in the archaeology of this place, and that’s a temple. Finding those crocodile mummies clinched it for me. I knew it had to be to the crocodile god Sobek. I used our database to check the dimensions of known Sobek temples elsewhere in Egypt, and what we have here looks bang-on. It would have opened up beside the river, and had access to that pool.’

‘Do we know what the cliff face looks like?’

Hiebermeyer produced another sheet of paper. ‘Ibrahim’s been hard at work over the last few days. He was desperate to tell you, but I asked him to wait until I’d put you in the picture. He took a Zodiac out on the river and used an echo-sounding imager he’d brought from his Red Sea equipment store. It couldn’t penetrate the mud in the centre of the pool, but it did produce this.’ He handed Jack the sheet. It showed a graduated profile image of the underwater cliff and the former rocky shore in front of it. At the base of the cliff Jack could clearly see the outline of a massive doorway, the jambs and pediment carved out of the living rock. Maurice was right. It was an incredible image, an ancient temple carved into the cliff, the entrance submerged completely under the waters of the Nile.

‘The door looks shut, and it’s probably stone,’ Hiebermeyer said. ‘But below it, you can just about see what I think is a rock-cut channel that led out to the pool. That also fits with other temples of Sobek: a channel to allow tame crocodiles to swim between the river and a sacred pool within the temple. It’s just possible that you might be able to get inside that way. The channel is about thirty metres below the present level of the Nile.’

‘What about before the Aswan dam?’ Jack said. ‘At low water before the 1960s the temple would have been exposed. Has it ever been reported?’

Hiebermeyer shook his head. ‘The photographs show a huge drift of sand and rocky debris coming down from the plateau below the sangar and concealing the entire entrance. It might have been possible for someone to slide into the upper part of the doorway, where there was usually a narrow triangular opening above the actual door to let in air and light. But it looks to me as if there’s been a rock fall that’s blocked up any opening that might have existed. If the locals know anything about a temple here, they’re keeping quiet. They seem to be terrified of this place.’

‘Can’t say I blame them,’ Costas murmured.

‘Can you do it?’ Hiebermeyer asked Jack. ‘Can you dive here?’

Jack slapped him on the back. ‘We can certainly try.’

‘That’s great,’ Costas mumbled. ‘First you violate the sacred crocodile mummies by excavating them, and now we plan to swim right into their lair. Just great.’

Jack gestured at the printout. ‘Have you told your Sudanese inspector about this?’

Hiebermeyer pulled down his hat and stood up. ‘We haven’t told anyone except you and Costas and Ibrahim. And I’ll be doing my very best to avoid him. I don’t get on with him and I’m liable to say something that will scupper us. Aysha’s the official permit-holder and site director here, and she knows how to deal with men like that.’

Costas watched Hiebermeyer’s shorts sink dangerously below his waistline, and then stared as he hitched them up and tightened the lederhosen suspenders. He shook his head. ‘Well, if Aysha can deal with you, she can deal with any man.’

Aysha waved dismissively. ‘Maurice is a piece of cake. Dangle an Egyptian mummy in front of him, and he’s putty in my hands.’

‘Even a crocodile mummy?’

‘Just one mummy,’ Hiebermeyer said, gazing fondly at Aysha and the baby, then glaring at Costas. ‘Just remember, not all the crocodiles around here are mummified.’

Costas suddenly looked dismayed, and Jack grinned. ‘While the inspection’s going on, my aim is to be underwater. It’s always the best place to be.’

Costas looked doubtfully at the river. ‘Usually the best place to be.’ He checked his iPhone. ‘Huh. A message from Sofia.’

‘She reminding you about that dinner date?’ Jack said.

‘She says she’s sending you her draft of the press release on the Beatrice for your approval. And she’s come up with a name for the submersible: Nina. It was one of Columbus’ ships; apparently its master was an ancestor of Sofia’s. It means “girl”. I like it. She wants us to do more exploration in the Americas.’

Aysha peered at him. ‘Who’s Sofia?’

‘Oh, just a friend.’

‘A dinner-date friend?’

‘I’ve sent her a picture of me with Ahren.’

‘Whoa,’ Aysha said. ‘That’s diving in at the deep end.’

‘Just showing her my friends.’

Aysha smiled. ‘You know how to touch a lady’s heart.’

Costas paused. ‘Will Sofia think I’m hitting on her?’

‘Well, are you?’

‘She and Costas met in a submersible,’ Jack said. ‘They plummeted to the depths together.’

‘You were there too, Jack!’ Costas exclaimed.

‘So, you’re taking a page right out of Lanowski’s book,’ Hiebermeyer said, smiling at Costas.

‘I’d rather not take anything out of Lanowski’s book,’ he muttered.

Hiebermeyer slapped him on the back. ‘You ever need any advice on the man stuff, you come to me.’

‘Yeah, you and Lanowski both,’ Costas said glumly.

‘He’d be more than happy to help out, I’m sure,’ Hiebermeyer said. ‘We could do the male bonding thing, a weekend maybe, and combine it with the two-day seminar I know he’s itching to give you on submersible circuitry. Or is it three days? He’s told me all about it. I think he called it an idiot’s guide. I might even sit in on it myself. I could learn a few things.’ He beamed at Jack mischievously.

‘I think you’ve just been had,’ Jack said, turning to Costas. ‘No more jokes about his shorts, maybe?’

‘No way,’ Costas said, suddenly determined, giving Hiebermeyer a steely look. ‘From now on, it gets serious.’

Jack grinned, and then his phone rang. He answered it quickly. ‘That was Ibrahim. He’s got the equipment stowed in the Toyota ready to drive to the river’s edge. Time to saddle up.’

‘What do you mean, saddle up?’

‘I thought we’d take a camel ride to get there. Immerse ourselves in desert culture before we immerse ourselves in the Nile. The full Sudan experience.’

Costas stared at the camel, which had ambled over to the plateau and was gazing at him dolefully. ‘Oh no,’ he said. ‘That thing’s got it in for me.’

‘It’ll be all right,’ Aysha said. ‘If you mount it while it’s lying down, you won’t have to go anywhere near its orifices.’

Costas looked at the camel, than back at the river. ‘Camel, crocodile. Camel, crocodile. Camel. Crocodile.’

Hiebermeyer thrust a picture he had been carrying of a Nile crocodile in front of Costas. ‘Snap,’ he said.

‘What do you mean, snap?’

‘I mean snap, the card game. If you don’t get on the camel now, I’ll put another picture on this one and then when you get in the water, snap.’

‘Snap,’ Costas repeated feebly. ‘Okay. I get it. Crocodiles. A really bad joke. You can make up for it by helping me get up on this camel. Where’s yours, Jack?’

Jack pretended to look shocked. ‘Oh, I’m not getting on a camel. No fear. I’ll be walking far ahead, at the end of a very long lead.’ He took a deep breath and turned to the others. ‘Good luck with the inspection, Aysha. I thought I’d been pretty well everywhere, but I’ve never dived in the Nile. I’m itching to get in.’

He turned and peered again at the plateau beside the river where the temple lay concealed. Only a few hours earlier, he had been flying over the Abu Simbel temple beside Lake Nasser, imagining diving into the submerged chambers in the cliff face where the statues of Ramses the Great had once stood. That would have been a remarkable dive, for the haunting atmosphere rather than the possibility of new discoveries; before the Aswam dam, the inner chambers at Abu Simbel had been above the level of the Nile and had been scoured by treasure-hunters and archaeologists for generations. Here, though, it was different. The temple at Semna had never been explored, and may have been sealed up for millennia. They might be like Carter and Carnarvon in the tomb of Tutankhamun, entering a space that had been undisturbed since the time of the pharaohs, except underwater and with dangers that made the curse of the tomb seem lame. But they had dived on the very edge of possibility before – into an iceberg, down mine shafts, above a live volcano – and Jack would confront the risks here as he had done then, with Costas to keep him from straying too far into the unknown. He felt the adrenalin pumping already. This could be the dive of a lifetime. If they could get inside.

He looked at Costas. ‘You good to go?’

Costas picked up the camel’s lead and handed it to him, a doleful expression on his face. ‘All I ever wanted to do was build submersibles. And here I am about to ride a camel across the desert in the Sudan, and then get eaten by crocodiles. And don’t say it,’ he said, glancing at Hiebermeyer. He shook his head again, and then turned to Jack, cracking a smile. ‘But you know I’ll follow you anywhere, Jack. Even on a camel. And in answer to your question, yes.’

‘Yes?’

‘I’m good to go.’

12

Jack slipped into the water at the edge of the river and felt the wonderful sense of relief he always experienced at the beginning of a dive, when the weight of his equipment disappeared and all he could think about was the excitement ahead. The submersible two days before had been a different kind of thrill, but only because the extraordinary allure of their prize had allowed him to overcome his dislike of confinement in small spaces and his yearning for the freedom he was about to experience now. He had been looking forward to diving again since he had last donned equipment more than a month ago at the IMU training facility in England, and the fact that this was his first ever dive in the Nile meant that the adrenalin was pumping at an even higher rate than usual. He looked at Costas, who was floating beside him with his visor already shut and his headlamp on. They were wearing all-environment e-suits, Kevlar-reinforced drysuits with fully integrated buoyancy and breathing systems controlled by computers built into the back of their helmets. The contoured backpacks contained three high-pressure cylinders filled with gas tailored for each dive, in this case air for the main part of the dive, a helium–oxygen mix for the deeper part and pure oxygen for decompression during their ascent, all of it attuned to a dive with a predicted depth of over sixty metres and a duration of at least an hour. They had no safety backup, but the equipment had been tried and tested in extreme conditions, and they both knew they could rely on each other’s skill-set and the mutual trust they had built up over the years.

Jack snapped his visor shut and activated the intercom. ‘Good to go?’ He could hear Costas’ heavy breathing as he struggled with something underwater. He slipped under the surface, and saw that Costas was attempting to adjust the weight of a large object on his waist belt. The increasingly frayed boiler suit which he had worn for years as an outer layer had finally given up the ghost during their dive the year before into the volcano at the site of Atlantis, and the new one still looked startlingly white, in need of a really dirty dive into a hole in the ground to give it credibility. Costas had transferred all his tools and gadgets from the remains of the old suit to the new one, and had added a second belt to take more. He heaved it round, then gave the divers’ okay signal.

‘Good to go.’

They dropped a metre or so below the surface, and then turned in the direction of the channel. Jack checked the computer readout inside his visor, showing depth, available gas supply and suit temperature, and then looked around him. The water was clear but with a peculiar darkness to it, and he could not see the bottom. They had chosen to enter at a point some fifty metres upriver from the submerged rocks of the great gate of Semna, and to use the current that flowed through the narrow defile to take them into the pool below and then up to the location of the submerged channel that seemed to lead into the underground chamber. They knew that the flow near the riverbed was strong, and they were prepared for a rocky ride and the risk that the current might sweep them beyond their target; but there were no good entry points closer to the chamber, and this route was the better option.

A few minutes later they had descended to twenty metres and Jack could see the two massive rocks of the great gates below him, their surface worn smooth by millennia of flood waters, and between them the defile some twenty metres wide that had once channelled the entire flow of the Nile into the pool below. Costas swam vigorously ahead to position himself over the channel, and Jack followed, letting himself sink slowly into it. ‘Ready for a ride,’ Costas said. Jack looked down into the blurry flow of fast water and realised that he was being sucked in, and that his only choice was to go with it. Costas was suddenly drawn away from him at horrifying speed, spinning round as the current took him forward and down towards the rocky base of the channel. As Jack felt the water grip him, he instinctively resisted, and for a few moments felt a searing pain in his torso as the current dragged his body away from the calmer waters above. Then he relaxed, letting the current pull him under, sucking him along. He was at the mercy of the water, unable to control his movements, and could do nothing but watch as he came terrifyingly close to the rocky outcrops that loomed out of the side of the channel and disappeared as quickly behind him. The depth readout inside his visor plummeted from thirty to fifty metres in a matter of seconds, and he braced himself for the impact with calmer water beyond the channel that he knew would be like hitting the surface after jumping off a high board. He caught sight of Costas some ten metres in front of him, his headlamp beam spinning around crazily, and he sensed a darkness ahead in the deep water of the pool at the end of the channel. He checked his depth gauge again: almost sixty metres. The floor of rock below him was pocked with potholes but worn smooth by the water, devoid of visible life. It was as if they were being sucked into another world, the Protean darkness from which the Egyptians believed all creation sprang; the channel was like the passage through which escape could never be possible, dooming all who allowed themselves to be taken by it to an eternity of swirling round the pit of the underworld.

Suddenly he felt the wind knocked out of him, as hard as if he had been hit in a rugby tackle, and he heard Costas gasp as well. They had been thrown clear of the channel, and he sensed the flow of the water decrease and his fins begin to find purchase as he kicked himself upright. He saw nothing but darkness, and switched on his headlamp. The beam reflected off particles suspended in the water, dazzling him, and he switched it off again. The glowing red readout of his depth gauge showed seventy-two metres, well below the level of the channel. He felt himself sinking further, and injected a quick blast of air into his buoyancy compensator to stop his descent. His limbs felt heavier as he moved them, as if they were pushing against some resistance, and he realised why. He had sunk into the silt on the floor of the pool, an accumulation that had been suspended here since time immemorial, swirling and settling beneath the channel, its bottom somewhere in the ooze far below him.

Costas’ voice came over the intercom. ‘Jack. You there?’

‘Roger that,’ Jack replied. ‘I’m here, though I don’t know where that is.’

‘Try rising to sixty metres.’

Jack kicked, but his foot jammed into something. He reached down with his right hand and felt a smooth shape with undulations, perhaps an eroded rock that had broken free from the channel and come to rest in the pool. He must be closer to the bottom than he had thought. He pulled his foot again, but it was stuck. He reached down with his left hand and felt the other side. It was big, at least a metre wide. He put his hand into a hole on one side, feeling a hollow space within, and then found a similar hole on the other side. He realised that the object was symmetrical, with the same shapes on both sides. He moved his hands forward where the rock narrowed towards his trapped leg, and then reached further down, feeling sharp protuberances through his gloves. He tugged at his foot again, and then heaved. ‘Shit,’ he exclaimed.

‘What is it?’ Costas said.

‘I’ve been bitten.’

‘What? I haven’t seen anything living down here.’

‘You won’t believe it, but it’s a crocodile.’

‘No way.’

‘Don’t worry, it’s not alive. It’s a giant crocodile skull, wedged into the rocks at the bottom of the pool. But I can’t get it to release me. My fin’s caught in its teeth.’

‘Don’t pull on it. I’ve been reading about these things. That only makes it clamp down harder. Try lifting the top jaw up.’

Jack reached down, found a place between the teeth to slot his fingers, and pulled with both hands. It came away surprisingly easily, and he kicked his trapped fin until it was free. He dropped the jaw, letting it fall slowly back into the silt, and then swam upwards, rising until he could just make out the glow from Costas’ headlamp beam and then his shadowy form a few metres away. He blasted air into his suit until he could see Costas clearly, his upper body poking out of the sediment into the clearer water above, and beyond that the turbulence of the current. ‘Thanks for the tip,’ he said. ‘I thought I was about to lose my foot.’

‘It gives me the jitters just thinking of that thing down there,’ Costas said. ‘You sure it was dead?’

‘Long dead. Pretty well fossilised. Probably even a dinosaur. It was big enough, huge.’

‘You sure? Everything looks bigger underwater. You know, refraction of light through your mask. Add a bit of adrenalin, a bit of nitrogen narcosis …’

Jack measured the breadth with his hands. ‘I didn’t see it. But it was this wide.’

‘Okay. That’s enough for me. The sooner we’re out of this primeval soup, the better.’ Costas pointed away behind them. ‘My terrain mapper’s showing the entrance to that rock-cut channel about forty metres away at bearing two hundred and seventy-three degrees, depth twenty-five metres. The underwater river created by the current seems to flow around the lower side of the pool, but we might be able to avoid it by swimming beneath and rising up the other side, close to the edge of the pool. You good with that?’

‘Sounds like a plan. You lead.’

Jack followed Costas as he rose slightly and swam over the sediment in an easterly direction. He dropped down again to avoid the swirling waters of the channel, his form skirting the billowing mass of sediment like an aircraft flying in and out of cloud. He stopped suddenly, raised his hand, and pointed at a jagged mass rising out of the silt. ‘Check this out,’ he said. ‘It’s machinery from a river steamer.’

Jack swam up beside him, close now to the rocky edge of the pool. Wedged into the mass of metal was a large upturned vessel like a rowing boat. ‘Amazing,’ he exclaimed. ‘The dimensions look bang-on. I’m guessing this is one of the whaleboats from the 1884 expedition.’ He stared for a moment at the wooden hull, as well preserved in the fresh water as if it had been sunk that day. He remembered the sangar with the evidence of the British soldiers, and for a moment it felt as if he would rise from the waters into the bustle of activity of those few days in 1884 when the expedition had passed overhead. He turned from the wreckage and looked at Costas. ‘Fantastic. This really brings history alive for me.’

‘How’s your air supply?’

Jack had been monitoring his gauges since dropping beyond their expected depth threshold in the pool. ‘More depleted than I’d like. I think I was breathing a lot trying to right myself in that channel.’

‘Me too. Let’s get going. At least from now on it’ll be shallower.’

They swam past the wreckage and up the rocky wall, its sides smoothed by the current but here and there covered with patches of green algae-like growth, the first signs of aquatic life Jack had seen since entering the water. A few minutes later they topped twenty-five metres depth and swam over the original surface of the riverbank beside the pool, as it had been at low water before the Aswan dam was constructed. They followed the drop-off until they came to the feature they had seen in the sonar profile readout that Ibrahim had provided; it was a rock-cut channel leading away from the submerged riverbank towards the cliff base and the underground chamber they knew lay some thirty metres to the east, still invisible in the murky gloom. Jack sank down into the channel, stretching his arms out to either side and dropping to the floor. ‘Just wide enough for a crocodile,’ he said.

‘Don’t,’ Costas said. ‘We’ve tempted fate enough as it is.’

‘The channel and the cliff face must have been buried in sand before the Aswan dam, explaining why none of the earlier archaeologists saw this,’ Jack said. ‘Everything must have been swept clean when the river rose and flooded through. It shows how much more you can see underwater. I really need to get Maurice diving.’

‘You’ve been saying that for years. You’ll never change him. And I dread to think where those shorts would end up if he dived in with them on.’

Jack swam up the channel, and moments later they were at the base of the cliff. The channel disappeared inside, a black cavity just large enough to fit his frame; its floor was carpeted with sand where it had evidently remained since the inundation, kept by the rock walls of the channel from being swept away. Jack sank down to the rocky floor, peering ahead through his headlamp beam as far as he could see. He noticed the sand slope upwards in a deeper accumulation until it seemed to fill the aperture some five metres ahead. He checked his pressure gauge. ‘I’ve got about twenty minutes left at this depth. We may not be able to get past that obstruction. But I’m going to try.’

‘I’m on your tail,’ Costas said. ‘Go for it.’

Jack swam forward using a gentle dolphin stroke with his fins, his arms by his sides. After five metres he came up against a bank of sand, and put his hands into it. The sand was coarse grained, easy to dig into, but there seemed little way of making progress. ‘I think we must be within a few metres of the chamber, but this could be as far as we go,’ he said.

‘Don’t give up so soon,’ Costas said. ‘Make way for Walter, and see what he can do.’

‘Walter?’

‘My very latest gadget. A miniature water pump. He sucks away sand and deposits it down an exhaust tube into the current. When I heard we were going to the Nile, I thought “sand”, and decided this would be a good dive to trial him.’

Jack heard a whirring and raised himself to let a little vehicle about the size of a small dog drive under him and bury itself in the sand, sucking it away and disgorging it out of a plastic tube somewhere behind. In a few moments it had burrowed deeper and disappeared. Jack followed, pulling himself through a hole in the sand just big enough for him to squeeze his way along. After about three metres the sand fell away to open water in front of him, and he saw Walter pause, leap out and then bury himself in the sediment again a few metres to the right, like a rodent digging a hole. Jack wriggled out of the sand and then turned to see Costas do the same, his head emerging beside Walter’s exhaust pipe. Costas quickly pulled himself along it and dived into the sediment after Walter until only his fins were sticking out. A moment later the whirring noise stopped and he re-emerged, holding the pump by the tube like a dog on a lead. ‘He’s got a mind of his own,’ he gasped, looking up. ‘So where are we?’

Jack increased the intensity of his headlamp and panned it around. They were inside a large rectilinear chamber at least ten metres high and fifteen metres across. The sand which had partly filled the channel formed a large sloping bank against the side of the chamber facing the cliff, evidently where it had fallen in from the sandbank outside before that had been swept away by the rising waters of the Nile. He watched as Costas swam slowly up to a dark form at the rear of the chamber, his beam playing on its surface, and then come to an abrupt stop where the form protruded at the top. There was a gasp, and a sound like a whimper, and then Costas spoke in a whisper. ‘Holy cow.’

Jack swam up to him, and gasped himself as the image came into view. ‘Holy crocodile, more like,’ he exclaimed.

Maurice had been right. Only he could never have imagined anything like this. It was a statue of the ancient Egyptian god Sobek, half man, half crocodile, its snout flashing with jewels where their headlamp beams reflected off them. It faced directly towards the entrance to the temple to the west, towards the setting sun. Jack glanced at his air supply readout. ‘Fifteen minutes left: five for the chamber, five to get out, five to ascend, then pure oxygen for half an hour.’

‘Okay, Jack.’ Costas had pushed off and recovered his composure. ‘You take a quick look around. I’ll reactivate Walter and get him to dig us out again. If he’s got any battery left.’

‘I don’t want to hear about it. Let me guess. You’ve never tried him before.’

‘Has to be a first time for everything.’

Jack swam down to the centre of the chamber, and then panned his beam around the walls, starting at the buried entranceway and moving clockwise. He saw nothing but blank stone until he had passed the statue and was on the wall to his right, when an extraordinary scene came into view. It was a relief carving of an ancient battle, or rather its aftermath, with a wild-haired enemy executing and dismembering their prisoners, a jarring scene because the prisoners were unmistakably Egyptian. He panned the beam further on. A huge figure of a man came into view, the style different from the battle scene. He stared in amazement, barely able to think, memorising as much of the detail as possible, features of the carving that he would have time to ponder later. It was the same pharaoh he had seen two days before, fifteen hundred miles away at the bottom of the Mediterranean. He could scarcely register it. Akhenaten.

‘One minute left, Jack.’

He saw something glinting in the sand below the image, hesitated, and then swam for it, in exactly the opposite direction from the exit route. He reached down and picked it up, clutching it as he swivelled round to swim back towards Costas. He looked at it for a second before shoving it in his leg pocket. It was a beautiful ancient scarab, carved out of green stone with a hieroglyphic cartouche on the base he recognised as that of Nefertiti, Akhenaten’s consort. It seemed an extraordinary artefact to discover in the empty shell of a temple, and he wondered whether anyone else had been in here since antiquity, whether anyone had come through the sand in the upper part of the doorway before the river level rose. Yet perhaps Nefertiti herself had been here, part of some ritual in this temple with Akhenaten. It was a remarkable find, but could scarcely prepare him for what he saw next, an object that Costas was holding up in both hands for him as he approached.

‘Walter came up with the goods,’ Costas said, his face beaming through his visor. ‘He dug this up when he went for his little snout around near the entrance.’

Jack took it from him. It was a heavy rod about a metre long, of solid gold, the heaviest golden object Jack had ever held. But it was more than just an astonishing treasure in gold. It was the royal sceptre of an Egyptian pharaoh, the only one ever found. A pharaoh truly had been here, but for some reason he had left his greatest symbol of office on the floor of the temple, discarded in this most unlikely place so far from the royal palaces of Egypt hundreds of miles away down the Nile.

Costas pushed him towards the hole. ‘Now, Jack. No time left.’

Jack held the rod close to him and dived into the sediment, his free hand forward, following the tunnel that had been created again by Walter. Five minutes later he was free, swimming down the channel into open water, Costas behind him trailing Walter, seeing the sunlight flickering on the surface of the river some fifteen metres above. He glanced at his readout again. They had been in the temple for only eight minutes. Eight minutes. And yet what they had found in those minutes would have been the discoveries of a lifetime for an Egyptologist. He could hardly wait to show what he was carrying to Maurice and Aysha. He turned to Costas, who had come up alongside him, a broad grin on his face. ‘I know what you want me to say,’ Jack said.

‘Yes?’

‘Well done, Walter. Well done, Costas.’

‘See? A team. All three of us.’

‘A team.’

‘I’ve never seen gold like that before, Jack. Never.’

‘Nor me. It’s one of the most amazing things we’ve ever found. I’m itching to get back in there again. We need to think about a team, logistics, a time frame.’

‘I’m on to it.’

Half an hour later they were floating on the surface a few metres off their planned exit point two hundred metres downstream from the pool, their visors lifted and eyes closed, drained by the exhilaration of the dive but revitalised after the final fifteen minutes breathing pure oxygen.

Costas floated alongside, and Jack saw that his boiler suit was now suitably streaked with grime. Costas looked sceptically at him. ‘Did you really see a crocodile down there?’

‘I told you, I didn’t see it. I felt it.’

‘Felt it. You mean felt as in you somehow sensed it, you thought it was there? A fevered imagination, maybe?’

Jack raised his hands. ‘No, I mean felt as in touched.’ He lifted one leg out of the water, showing the white striations on his fin. ‘And you can see the bite marks.’

‘You could have scratched your fin against the rocks going through that channel.’

‘If you don’t believe me, you can go down there and see for yourself.’

Costas shuddered. ‘Not a chance. It’s bad enough thinking it might be there, let alone actually finding it.’

Hiebermeyer came bounding down the slope, Ibrahim following behind, and squatted down by the shore. ‘Well, how did it go?’

‘We found it, Maurice,’ Jack said, his eyes gleaming. ‘You were right. It’s a temple to Sobek, with a huge statue of the god at one end. But it’s even better than that. There’s a massive wall relief showing Egyptian soldiers defeated in battle. I think it must have been carved during those years after the death of Senusret when things were falling apart down here. Maybe they thought they’d offended the gods in some way. My guess is the temple dates to that time too. But it gets even better. At one end of the relief there’s a huge image under a sun symbol, a pharaoh, but not wearing a pharaoh’s crown or carrying the sceptre, walking out as if he’s striding off into the desert alone. It’s Akhenaten.’

‘Mein Gott,’ Maurice said under his breath. ‘Lower your voice, Jack. Let’s keep this to ourselves for now, the four of us here and Aysha. Was there anything else? Any clues? Anything like the image on that plaque in the sarcophagus?’

Jack pursed his lips. ‘In the lower folds of the skirt the lines of the sun symbol seemed to create a pattern. At the point where the lines converge, a square block is missing, cut out as if someone’s removed it. There might have been something in it, some recognisable feature, maybe some hieroglyphics.’

Hiebermeyer exhaled slowly, shaking his head. ‘Still a missing piece of the jigsaw puzzle.’ He stared at Jack, narrowing his eyes. ‘You’ve found something else, haven’t you?’

‘I always thought you wanted to be a pharaoh, Maurice. Well, today’s your lucky day.’ Jack heaved the golden sceptre out of the water and placed it in the other man’s outstretched hands. Hiebermeyer stared speechless, and fell back against the slope, sitting and holding the sceptre. As he turned it round, he noticed a cartouche. ‘Akhenaten,’ he whispered. ‘It’s Akhenaten’s royal sceptre. It’s the most astonishing find in Egyptology in my lifetime.’

‘The question is, how did it get there?’ Jack said matter-of-factly. ‘And I think the clues are in the wall carving and in the closed door of the temple. The carving shows Akhenaten stripped of ornaments, as if he’s walking away as an ordinary man, not as some priest-king. That fits in with the image of a penitent man going in search of the Aten, like a pilgrim who has cast aside wordly goods. And the door suggests finality, as if he’s closing the door on the old religion and walking away free of it. Let’s imagine Akhenaten himself in there, carrying out some kind of propitiatory ceremony with the priests, maybe even something he’s told them will reaffirm his allegiance to the old gods, but then abruptly turning and casting aside his crown and sceptre and walking out, leaving his men to shut the door on the old religion for ever, even the priests themselves.’

‘Good crocodile food,’ Costas said.

‘What do you mean?’ asked Jack.

‘Well, Maurice himself said it. This was a place out of the way where they might have fed humans to the crocodiles, like the Hebrew slaves. What better way for Akhenaten to turn the tables than to release the crocodiles from this pool up that channel into the sealed temple, to feed on the priests themselves?’

Hiebermeyer pulled a keffiyeh out of his satchel and wrapped it round the sceptre. ‘Not a word of this to anyone until we’ve finished here. If the locals get wind of a find like this, we’ll be swamped by gangsters searching for gold, and before you know it this place will be a battleground. And not a word to our new Sudanese inspector, al’Ahmed. This sceptre should go to the Khartoum museum, but I don’t trust him.’ He glanced at Ibrahim, who was standing beside him. ‘We’ll take this away in the Toyota and hide it in the conservation tent in the camp.’

Ibrahim nodded, took the bundle and hurried away back up the slope. Jack held on to a rock by the shore, speaking to Hiebermeyer. ‘I want to get back in there tomorrow. Maybe we can find that missing piece of the relief carving. For starters, we need to establish a depot tent for our gear and hire a security guard.’

Hiebermeyer shook his head. ‘That can wait. Did you find anything down there from the 1880s?’

Jack nodded. ‘A whaleboat and some steamer machinery. There’s probably more. What do you mean, this can wait? What’s more important?’

‘Good. That’s what I’ll tell al’Ahmed about. The reason you’re not diving here again tomorrow is that he’s arranged for you to visit the wreck site of the Abbas, the steamer that foundered upriver in 1884 with Gordon’s antiquities on board. It could be the only opportunity we get. It seems too good to miss.’

Jack’s heart pounded with excitement, but he forced himself to think carefully. ‘What about the security situation?’

‘He says he’s sending in his own people to keep the local warlord at bay. I’m assuming he’s talking about Sudanese Interior Ministry police.’

‘You said you didn’t trust him,’ Costas said. ‘How can we?’

‘You can’t. But he talked about it while the other antiquities people were there, the ones we do trust. He said he was arranging a permit and fast-tracking the paperwork, and nobody there raised any protest; there was a lot of enthusiasm, in fact. They could all be in his pay, of course, but we have to take that chance. If this leads to a high-profile excavation and some spectacular finds, then it will justify his appointment and raise his status. It makes sense for him to want it to work.’

‘Or it could lead to us finding something he really wants, and then him booting us out,’ Jack said.

‘It’s your call.’

Jack tipped over and floated on his back, smelling the Nile, enjoying the sun on his face. He thought of the site of the Abbas, upstream beyond the great gates, into the forbidding land that had terrified the Egyptians in the time of the pharaohs, and thousands of years later when a new force had risen to confront them in the desert. He thought of the men of the river column, of the unknown man with the rifle in the sangar who had so intrigued him, and how he and Costas now seemed to be dogging the footsteps of the relief expedition. Travelling to a site upstream, they would reach the place where the column had fought its first bloody battles with the Mahdi. And he thought of the lure of something else that had brought Akhenaten here, and perhaps Gordon too.

He thought of the sarcophagus and the plaque, and now the Sobek temple and the golden sceptre: they were extraordinary discoveries that had made pursuing this trail more than worthwhile. He could end the season on a high, and look forward to returning to both places next year, if nothing else got in the way. But right now, knowing that there might be more to be found, a potentially greater prize, put him on tenterhooks. He was on a roll, and he could not stop it.

He lifted his head, and stared at Hiebermeyer. ‘Okay. I’ll go with it. Let’s get Ibrahim to load up the gear. We can leave this evening. It could be the only chance we’ll ever have to find out what General Gordon might have hidden in that boat.’

13

Major Edward Mayne opened the flap of the tent and stepped inside, his eyes smarting in the fog of tobacco smoke that filled the air. It had been hot outside, uncomfortably so in the late afternoon sun, but here it was like walking into the overheated parlour of a London gentlemen’s club, or one of the native sweat lodges that Charrière had shown him in Canada when they were boys. He envied Charrière remaining outside, sitting with the sentries in the shade of a palm tree close to the Nile. The British had not yet learned the Arab way of keeping a tent cool in the desert sun, and the heavy canvas was more suited to a Crimean winter than the furnace of the Sudan. To Mayne it was symptomatic of the campaign as a whole: the British had half adapted, wearing desert-coloured khaki instead of scarlet uniforms, riding camels instead of horses, some of them even ditching their pith helmets for Arab headdress, yet the tactics were those of earlier campaigns. Mayne knew that there were those in this tent now who had the originality of thought to break free, to adapt to the desert; yet with time running short and Wolseley in tight control, there seemed little chance of altering a course of action that had been fatally flawed from the start.

Two officers were hunched over a portable desk in the far corner of the tent, one busy with a protractor and ruler and the other taking notes. Five other men sat around a trestle table in front of Mayne, dressed in the idiosyncratic mix of uniform and personal clothing typical of British officers on campaign. Wolseley himself sat directly opposite, a short, dapper figure immaculately composed, peering at a map along with three of the others. The only man who had seen Mayne enter was sitting to Wolseley’s right. There had been a decidedly exotic tang to the air, and Mayne remembered the taste for cherry tobacco that Burnaby had picked up on a recent sojourn in Morocco. He was there now, lounging sideways, cigarette held languidly and legs crossed, just like his famous portrait by James Jacques Tissot painted fifteen years before in London; only instead of the undress uniform of the Royal Horse Guards, he was wearing a kind of ersatz Scottish deerstalking outfit, with a giant howdah pistol holstered at his side. He nodded amiably at Mayne and took a deep drag on his cigarette, letting the ash fall in a shower on the floor and exhaling smoke rings upwards, watching them cascade against the tent roof and descend in a cloud over the other men.

Mayne saw another difference from the portrait: the supremely self-confident cavalry officer of Tissot’s portrait had become heavyset, with dimmed eyes; he was a man who knew he could go no further in his military career, and whose time for shoehorning himself into adventure would soon be curtailed by age and a new world with fewer places for freelancers like him. Mayne knew that the indifference Burnaby affected here cloaked an acute mind, yet he sensed too that the detailed planning that was preoccupying the others truly was an irrelevance for a man who had perhaps been drawn into the Sudan for something of the same reasons that had compelled Gordon himself to return, attracted by the darkness that lay to the south and by the promise of apotheosis in the battles to come.

‘Ah. Mayne.’ Wolseley had spotted him, and quickly stood up and extended a hand. Mayne leaned over and shook it, feeling the skin of his arm prickle with the heat under his tunic. ‘You know the others around this table. General Earle of the river column, General Stewart of the desert column. And of course Colonel Burnaby and General Buller.’

Earle and Stewart both glanced at him and quickly turned back to the map, which Mayne could see showed the loop of the Nile surrounding the Bayuda desert on the way south to Khartoum. Buller was sitting at Wolseley’s left, a giant of a man with a face like a North American bison. He heaved himself up and extended a hand. ‘Edward, my dear boy. Had no idea you were here until Wolseley told me. You should have sought me out in my tent. You know there’s always a bottle to be uncorked for you.’

‘Sir,’ said Mayne, shaking hands. ‘I should like that above all things. Perhaps when this is over.’ Buller was one of Wolseley’s inner circle, his so-called ‘Ashanti Ring’. Mayne had first met him in Canada, and despite his bovine exterior had found him an agreeable companion who spoke with refreshing candour. Like Burnaby, Buller had grown stout and heavy jowled, fuelled by a prodigious appetite for alcohol; Mayne had seen his personal camel train arrive at Korti laden down with crates of Veuve Clicquot champagne, an outrageous indulgence that only Buller could pull off. But the men loved him because he was a soldier’s soldier, a celebrated winner of the Victoria Cross in the Zulu War, a warrior who fought at the bloody forefront of battle and had a reputation for fearlessness surpassed only by Burnaby himself.

‘Major Mayne has been attached to the river column,’ Earle said, peering at Buller over pince-nez spectacles as the other man sat heavily back down. ‘He’s been surveying the riverbanks, carrying out forward reconnaissance ahead of the boats.’

‘Just like old times in Canada, eh?’ Buller said, slapping his hand on the table. ‘And you’ve got the Mohawks with you too!’

Mayne turned to Wolseley. ‘I’ve brought along Charrière, as you requested. He’s waiting outside.’

‘Best damned hunter I’ve ever seen,’ Buller rumbled, shaking his head. ‘Took me with him into the forest back in ’70 above the Winnipeg river. Never seen a man fell a deer before with a throwing knife. He still got that squaw? She was damned good too, could have led the expedition.’

‘His wife and child died in a cholera outbreak two years ago,’ Mayne said.

‘Ah. Sorry to hear it.’ Buller paused for a moment, then turned to Wolseley. ‘Had Stephenson in for a few drinks last night, your old quartermaster-general. Told me about your pension arrangement for the voyageurs after the Red River expedition. Damned decent of you, if you ask me.’

Wolseley looked briefly discomfited, then tapped his pencil on the map. ‘It was the least I could do. They gave their services to an expedition which achieved its goal without a single life being lost. I treated them as I would have done British soldiers, for services to Queen and Empire.’

‘Especially generous to Charrière, I gather,’ Buller said.

‘He was my chief reconnaissance scout. He risked his life more than the others.’

‘Never knew when you might need to call on his services again, eh?’ Buller said, eyeing Wolseley and slapping the table. ‘In the Sudan, of all places.’

Mayne knew that the voyageurs were being paid handsomely for their work on the Nile, so it was hardly as if they were here solely out of loyalty to a patron. But it was typical of Wolseley, the type of act that drew men to him. He could be prickly, sometimes snobbish, an infuriating stickler for detail that was probably the undoing of this expedition, but he could also be generous to those under him in a way that seemed to go beyond expediency. Even though he looked something of an aesthete beside larger-than-life characters like Buller and Burnaby, he was also a ruthless soldier who bore the scars of front-line fighting from his first action as a subaltern in the Crimea thirty years before.

Buller peered at Mayne. ‘So, you’ve been surveying the Nile, eh? Too many damned engineers on this expedition, if you ask me. Mapping, planning, building. Old Charlie Gordon’s a sapper, and General Graham at Suakin on the Red Sea, and those two in the corner,’ he said, jerking his head towards the figures hunched over the desk. ‘If you want my opinion, we’re overengineered.’

Mayne saw the twinkle in Buller’s eye. He was right, as usual, but not necessarily in the way he meant. Sapper officers were trained to seek solutions to engineering problems, not to create them. In many ways this was an engineers’ war: a war of survey, of intelligence, of logistics. And Buller knew perfectly well that the problem with overengineering lay with Wolseley, whose fastidious attention to detail and obsession with repeating his renowned river expedition had prevented the dash across the desert that could have seen a British force at the gates of Khartoum weeks ago. But Buller owed his career to Wolseley, and he was astute enough to couch his criticism in elliptical terms. In any case, they all knew it was too late for any change of strategy now.

The taller and younger of the two men who had been working in the corner of the tent came over to Wolseley, holding a map. He had chiselled, handsome features, and a waxed handlebar moustache over a beard; a keffiyeh cloth was wound loosely around his neck, and with his sun-bronzed features he could have passed himself off as an Arab. He stared at Mayne, the cast in his right eye making it impossible to return his gaze comfortably. Wolseley glanced up at him. ‘Major Kitchener has just traversed the Bayuda desert and come within two miles of Khartoum. He’s my Deputy Assistant Adjutant General for Intelligence, though sometimes he thinks he runs the show.’

Mayne nodded at Kitchener, knowing there would be no handshake. Kitchener was an individualist who did not take orders easily; he was not one of Wolseley’s Ashanti Ring, and had come perilously close on several occasions to overstepping the mark. He was saved by his indispensability as an intelligence officer and by the sheer force of his presence. He had become the eyes and ears of the expedition, a fluent Arabic speaker who had developed his own intelligence network as far as Khartoum and rallied loyal tribesmen around him, and who was the last man present in the tent to have spoken with Gordon. Mayne had encountered him three weeks earlier in the Bayuda desert, when Kitchener had swept down upon them like one of the Madhi’s emirs, swathed in Arab dress and surrounded by a bodyguard of tribesmen.

Mayne looked into Kitchener’s disarming eyes. ‘Congratulations on the survey of Palestine. I saw the first of your volumes at the Royal United Service Institute library in London before I came out here. It’s a prodigious achievement, more than most survey officers would hope to achieve in a lifetime. It puts the study of biblical geography truly on the map.’

Kitchener kept staring. ‘Palestine interests you? You were not part of the biblical archaeology society at Chatham.’

Mayne held the steely gaze. He remembered the group of evangelical officers who believed that the scientific survey of biblical lands was their true calling, the most noble use of the skills they were learning as engineers. Charles Gordon, an individualist who professed allegiance to no church or movement, was not among them, but they revered him for his morality, and because he seemed to live his life to the utmost by Christian principles: a man who would now seem poised for the ultimate Christian act, willing to sacrifice himself for those in Khartoum who depended on him.

Mayne shook his head. ‘My interest is purely professional. Before coming out to the Sudan, Lord Wolseley asked me to discover everything I could about Gordon, his possible motivations for being here, his recent state of mind. I read the book he wrote about his time in Jerusalem in 1883. He seemed to retreat into himself in much the same way he has done in Khartoum, and as he did in China twenty years ago before leading his army to victory there. But he also carried out some useful survey work. He used your maps and notes to identify to his satisfaction a number of New Testament sites. Together your work provides a most valuable basis for intelligence on Palestine should we ever come to confront the Ottomans there.’

‘My opinion, decidedly,’ said Kitchener, his stare unwavering.

Wolseley gestured towards the other man at the desk. ‘In which case you will also be familiar with the work of Kitchener’s superior and my Deputy Adjutant General for Intelligence, Colonel Sir Charles Wilson.’

Mayne looked over, seeing a slight man of about Wolseley’s age who also wore the lapel badges of the Royal Engineers. Wilson put up a hand in acknowledgement while continuing to write in his notebook. It made sense that Wilson should have been appointed to the expedition. He had recently been military adviser to Sir Evelyn Baring, British agent in Egypt, and had even been considered for Gordon’s role as saviour of Khartoum. He and Gordon knew each other well and Wilson shared his passion for the Holy Land. Like Kitchener, Wilson was not one of Wolseley’s Ashanti Ring, yet Mayne sensed no palpable tension between the two men. They were united by an overwhelming common purpose, the relief of Khartoum, and Wilson’s personal friendship with Gordon as well as his expertise on the Sudan meant that he could be at the centre of Wolseley’s operations with no questions being asked.

Wilson finished writing and came over, looking at Mayne with his penetrating blue eyes. Mayne extended his hand over the table. ‘Sir Charles. While I was reading General Gordon’s Reflections on Palestine, I chanced upon a description of the ancient arch that bears your name under the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. I should very much like to have your opinion on its purpose.’

Wilson shook his hand, keeping his gaze. ‘It’s always gratifying to find an officer with an interest in archaeology, especially a fellow sapper. Perhaps when this expedition is over we can meet up again and discuss it.’

Mayne withdrew his hand. There had been no hint of recognition in Wilson’s eyes. Yet Wilson had been Mayne’s superior in the intelligence department for almost fifteen years now, the man who briefed and debriefed him in the hidden complex of rooms under Whitehall. Mayne felt a rush of certainty course through him. In the past, his immediate contact had always been someone else, a middleman, an anonymous officer on the staff, someone who would secretly make his presence known and wait to pass on the signal to activate his mission. But this time was different. For the first time, Wilson himself had come, a man who was not only intelligence chief for the Nile expedition but also head of the most secretive department in Whitehall, an officer charged by the highest authority in the War Office to send out missions essential for the security of the Empire, missions that would shock the British Establishment to the core if the truth were ever to come out.

Mayne thought hard, his mind racing. Everything that was happening now, the relief expedition, the planning around this table, was the culmination of involvement in the Sudan that had begun before the British invaded Egypt three years earlier, going back to Gordon’s appointment by the Ottoman Khedive as governor general of the Sudan in 1875. At that date Wilson’s official role was as consul general in Constantinople, a brief that allowed him to travel widely and gather intelligence on the Ottoman Empire. It was no surprise that his interests came to cover the southern limits of Ottoman control, in Egypt and the Sudan. With the completion of the Suez Canal in 1869, Egypt had become the pivotal crossroads of empire, the gateway to India. For the British and the French, the other main shareholder in the canal, the lands of Egypt and the Near East also held huge historical resonance. Eight hundred years ago, the first crusaders had reached the Holy Land, confronting the forces of Islam that had laid claim to Jerusalem. Now those forces were once again rearing up, and standing at the apex of that gathering maelstrom was the figure of General Charles Gordon. Mayne knew now that his own future was wrapped up in that man’s destiny; that this was to be the ultimate mission for which Wilson had been preparing him.

Wolseley beckoned Mayne over. ‘You know why you are here?’

‘I await your instructions, sir.’

‘Then listen closely. What I am about to tell you will not only determine Gordon’s future, but will shape the future of the Sudan and Egypt and our prestige in the eyes of the world. What I am going to ask you to do must remain top secret. There will be no medals, no public accolade. Only those of us around this table will ever know. Are you willing to serve your Queen and country?’

Mayne caught Wilson’s eye, then gave Wolseley a steely look. ‘It’s what I’m here for. Tell me what I have to do.’

14

Wolseley picked up a tattered piece of paper from the table and showed it to Mayne. ‘This is Gordon’s last communiqué. It reached me through Kitchener’s network of spies, carried by fast camel through the desert. It’s dated the twenty-ninth of December, two days ago. He says: “Khartoum all right, and can hold out for years.”’

Kitchener opened the notebook he had been holding. ‘General Gordon has been sending his journals down by steamer to Metemma for safe keeping, and I have read the most recent entries. This is one for the fourteenth of December. “If the expeditionary force does not come in ten days, the town may fall; and I have done my best for the honour of our country.”’

Burnaby tapped his cigarette ash on to the floor. ‘Lord Randolph Churchill has suggested to me that we collect together a group of big-game hunters with African experience and send them to rescue Gordon,’ he said. ‘A posse, as I believe they would call it in America.’

‘With you at their head, doubtless,’ said Buller, giving Burnaby a jocular look.

‘The thought had occurred to me,’ Burnaby said with a smile, leaning back and exhaling another cloud of smoke.

‘Out of the question,’ Wolseley said forcibly. ‘This not the Wild West, and Her Majesty’s army does not appoint deputies to do its dirty work.’ Kitchener shut the notebook, and Wolseley stared at Mayne. ‘You see our dilemma. Gordon was in a perilous situation in November, and yet two days ago he can last out for years. Clearly the latter cannot be the case. We must question his state of mind.’

‘Can you not order Gordon to leave?’ Earle said. ‘You outrank him.’

‘Officially he works for the Khedive of Egypt, as governor general of the Egyptian province of Sudan. If I bring the Queen’s Regulations to bear, he will resign his commission in the British army and be out of our orbit completely. He has tried to resign before, and only the intervention of Gladstone kept him on our books. It is the only thread of control we have with him and we cannot jeopardise it.’

‘The man only ever treated orders as a basis for discussion,’ Earle said. ‘They even say he consults the prophet Isaiah before giving his approval.’

‘Orders as a basis for discussion? That sounds familiar.’ Wolseley raised an eyebrow at Kitchener. ‘Except that some of us operate without the need to consult any prophet other than ourselves.’

‘Is there any hope of negotiation with the Mahdi?’ Earle persisted.

Kitchener snorted. ‘As self-appointed ruler of the entire Muslim world, he answers only to Allah.’

‘Only to God?’ Buller mutterered. ‘That sounds like Gordon.’

‘General Gordon answers to himself,’ Kitchener snapped.

‘That also sounds like someone else, Major Kitchener.’

Kitchener’s look hardened, but he kept his counsel. ‘General Gordon’s intentions are tied to his sense of responsibility towards the people of Khartoum. In China he was there to defend the mercantile interests of the West, and in Khartoum he is here to defend the livelihood of the Sudanese.’

‘By all accounts it is a pestilential place, a veritable Gomorrah,’ Earle said forcibly. ‘Why Gordon should choose to make it his cause is beyond me. They say that half the population are slaves, the other half slave-dealers.’

‘A trade that Gordon has allowed to continue, to the consternation of the prime minister and the Queen,’ Buller added.

‘He allowed it to continue because it is in the best interests of the Sudanese people,’ Kitchener retorted. ‘General Gordon abhors the corruption of the Ottoman viziers who control the Sudan, and the venality of the Arab and Egyptian merchants. By banning the slave trade he would have lost sympathy with both the Ottomans and the Sudanese. By allowing it to continue he has established his reputation among them and increased his chance of quashing the trade when the time is right. His actions are sorely misunderstood, even by his erstwhile friends. His decision was made with noble intentions.’ Kitchener opened a marked page in the notebook and read from it. ‘“November the ninth. I declare positively, and once and for all, that I will not leave the Sudan until everyone who wants to go down is given the chance to do so.”’ He paused. ‘The next line is written by General Gordon in capital letters. He states that if any emissary comes up ordering him down, “I will not obey it, but will stay here, and fall with the town, and run all risks.”’ Kitchener shut the journal and put it down. ‘He reiterates his intention to stay many times, with great vehemence.’

‘At that date he was incensed by the murder of his friend Colonel Stewart, who he had sent down from Khartoum to supposed safety in the steamer Abbas a few days before,’ Wolseley said. ‘Now perhaps he will be less agitated and see more reason.’

‘Or see no reason at all,’ Buller said. ‘He has been under fire since the end of October, when the Mahdi arrived with his army outside Khartoum. Kitchener tells me that his garrison lives on tree gum and tobacco dregs and bread made from the pith of palm trees. As for the civilians, they must have eaten the last of the rats weeks ago. The dead will be strewn in the streets, and one shudders to think what the living eat now. There are those who say that Gordon has rigged the palace to explode if it is taken; ever the engineer. They say that he sleeps by day and stays up at night, sitting framed by his window in the palace deliberately backlit by candles, as if he’s asking for a bullet. I ask you: are these the acts of a man who can any longer see reason?’

Kitchener snorted. ‘General Gordon is an officer of the Royal Engineers. He will have calculated the distance across the Nile to the nearest sharpshooters, and know perfectly well that their Remingtons would stand little chance of hitting him at that range. And he will also have calculated the uplifting effect on his Egyptian and Sudanese garrison of seeing him night after night seemingly impervious to gunfire. If it makes him seem a god in their eyes, then it can only be to the good in his present situation.’

‘It’s not their perception of his godlike status that matters to me; it’s whether he has that perception himself,’ Buller rumbled. ‘Gods don’t need to be rescued by mere mortals like us.’

Wolseley tapped his pencil on the table. ‘Twenty years ago I watched him deliberately expose himself above the parapets at Sebastopol in the Crimea. He was drawing the fire of Russian sharpshooters so that the smoke would reveal their positions. He’s not the only one among us who seems to relish a dice with death.’ He glanced at Burnaby, who flicked the ash of his cigarette and looked impassively on. ‘In February, Gordon arrived in Khartoum alone, like a penitent holy man. He presented himself to the people of Sudan as their saviour, and also as one who was at their mercy should they choose to disbelieve him. He depends for survival on his own heroic self-image. That is how you garner loyalty among these people.’

‘Heroic, or foolish,’ Buller muttered.

‘He has the heroic qualities of authenticity and honour,’ Kitchener replied. ‘He will not be swerved from what he thinks is right, and he will not let down those who have given their loyalty to him. He will not leave Khartoum without his people,’ he reiterated.

‘The fate of that place and its people is beyond our control,’ Wolseley replied.

‘Then so, it seems, is the fate of General Gordon,’ said Kitchener.

Wolseley waved the piece of paper again. ‘But our latest intelligence suggests otherwise. This message was written only days ago, and is buoyant.’

‘We would be wrong to believe such assurances,’ Buller rumbled. ‘With Colonel Stewart gone, Gordon no longer has Europeans to advise him, only Egyptians and Sudanese who regard him not as a general but as a holy man, their own version of the Mahdi. He even wants a slave-trader to be his deputy, I tell you.’

‘Zubayr of the Ja’aliyyin,’ Kitchener said. ‘A venal man by the standards we suppose that we have, but the Sudanese tribesmen understand a slave-trader and respect him more than they do the Ottoman and Egyptian officials.’

‘It’s just as it was in China,’ Wolseley muttered. ‘He has always surrounded himself with mavericks and foreigners. His closest confidants have never been men of his own background we can trust, but others like himself who take him even further from our control. In China he locked himself away and brooded for two months before finally capturing Soochow and killing the rebel leaders. He may be in the same state now, and have a surprise in store for us yet.’

Buller grunted. ‘From what Kitchener tells us, he is now very far from the logic that we propose to apply to his rescue. He may even wish to dig himself deeper into that pestilential hole that looks as if it will become his tomb.’

‘He has done everything to increase his isolation,’ added Earle. ‘Even before the telegraph line was cut, he packed up his cipher book and sent it away with his belongings in the steamers. Why did he do that, deliberately cutting himself off from us?’

‘A fit of pique,’ Buller said. ‘Disgust that he was being made a sacrificial lamb.’

‘It would take someone with a saint’s powers to endure what he has gone through without cracking.’

‘It is a test he’s set himself. He’s dragging his own cross through the streets to Calvary. No wonder he was so interested in finding the location of Golgotha on his recent trip to Jerusalem. He was pacing out his march to apotheosis.’

‘Gordon’s isolation began before he left England,’ Wolseley said. ‘His furtive departure from Waterloo station in February, with the commander-in-chief packing his bag for him and Lord Baring handing him money, like parents sending off a miscreant son to exile in the colonies. The die was cast the moment that train pulled out of the station. And then the brief for his role at Khartoum which every-one knew he would discard in favour of his own mission, to save the people. I cannot help but see Mr Gladstone behind this.’

‘Gladstone does not want a martyr,’ Buller said.

‘It might serve him for Gordon to make a fool of himself.’

‘There is a fine line between a fool and a martyr.’

‘That’s Gladstone’s gamble, and perhaps Gordon’s too.’

‘This rescue mission has been hampered from the start by Whitehall,’ Buller said, slapping the table. ‘Who, I wonder, could be behind that? And there is another possibility. Gordon could go down in flames with his city, or he could survive and be captured. That would be the worst of all outcomes for Gladstone. The image of Gordon standing alongside the Mahdi in chains must keep him awake at night.’

‘Or not in chains,’ Wolseley said. ‘That would be his worst nightmare.’

‘Then we must do everything we can to prevent it.’

‘That is why we are here, gentlemen. On with the planning.’

Mayne felt the sweat prickling on his face. He glanced at Wilson, who appeared to be concentrating on the map. The conversation had veered dangerously close to their own secret purpose in being in the Sudan, and he was beginning to feel on edge.

Buller banged his hand on the table again. ‘The longer he strings it out, the more intractable he becomes. If he has gone seeking personal redemption like the children of Israel, then I fear he may have become lost in the wilderness.’

‘This is a military and logistical matter, not one requiring us to delve into the mind of a latter-day prophet,’ Wolseley said sharply.

‘In that you are, in my opinion, entirely wrong,’ Kitchener said quietly.

Wolseley glared at him, and then put a finger on the map. ‘We are here to discuss a rescue mission. We are at Korti on the Nile. From here, the column under General Stewart will advance across the Bayuda desert, rejoining the Nile where it loops around some hundred miles to the south of us. Meanwhile the column under Earle will continue to make their way up the river through the cataracts.’ He swept one hand across the desert and the other over the eastward loop of the Nile, bringing them together on the river at a point about halfway between Korti and Khartoum. ‘The two columns will meet here at Metemma. Stewart’s column will arrive first, and an advance force will be sent forward to Khartoum in Gordon’s three river steamers that should be waiting for us. When Earle’s river column arrives, the rest of the force will embark on the whaleboats and follow. If the advance contingent in the steamers is successful in retrieving Gordon, then the rest of the force will turn around and withdraw to Korti and the Egyptian border. If we do have to go forward into Khartoum and raise the siege, then so be it. But our intention, gentlemen, is not to save Khartoum or the Sudan. It is to rescue General Gordon.’

‘The Mahdi’s army will not stand idle,’ Kitchener said. ‘There will be battle in the desert, mark my words. Days spent dithering and planning now will advance our cause to hopelessness. Time is of the essence.’

Wolseley tapped his pencil irritably, then leaned forward. ‘After discussion with Colonel Wilson, I have decided to send a man forward to Khartoum in advance of the steamers. His job will be to persuade Gordon of the utmost gravity of his situation, and the imperative for him to leave with our forces when they arrive. Colonel Wilson himself will then accompany the flotilla of steamers up to Khartoum to escort Gordon out. Gordon must be made to understand that the steamers will have room for him alone, and not for the entire damned population of Khartoum as well. If he wishes to save his own skin, he must abandon them. The man I have selected for the job is you, Major Mayne. If Gordon chooses to stay, then his fate is no longer in your hands. Do you understand?’

Mayne remained stock still. ‘Yes, sir.’

Wolseley put down his pencil and arched his hands together. ‘Time has run short for us, gentlemen. Colonel Wilson has received intelligence that Russian forces have advanced over the Oxus river near Panjdeh in Afghanistan. It’s the most dangerous escalation since the end of the war in Afghanistan four years ago. If it comes to renewed war now, we will be siding with the Afghans against the Russians. Mr Gladstone has ordered an emergency session of Parliament and the army in India has begun to mobilise. And this won’t just be a British war to curb Russian imperialism on the borders with India. The French will become involved, as they did in the Crimea. The web of alliances across Europe will draw in other nations, some of them itching for an excuse to get at each other’s throats. The greatest fear is that Germany could enter as a belligerent against us and even against the Russians too, and that she could emerge supreme if we overextend ourselves in the east. Gentlemen, for the first time since the war against Napoleon, we could find ourselves leading armies across the English Channel to Flanders and Picardy and Normandy.’

‘So Egypt and the Sudan becomes a sideshow,’ Buller rumbled.

‘We could be withdrawn at any moment,’ Wolseley replied. ‘We must attempt to reach Khartoum without delay.’

‘The Mahdist jihad is as much a threat as the Russian menace,’ Kitchener said.

Wolseley shot him an annoyed glance. ‘We are here to rescue Gordon, not to put down a desert rebellion that would scarcely concern us were Gordon safe and away.’

‘It should concern us,’ Kitchener replied forcibly. ‘It threatens Egypt and the entire Arab world. The fires of fanaticism will spread to India. There will be bombings and outrages in Europe.’

Wolseley waved one hand dismissively. ‘The Mahdi will die, and the rebellion will wash against the borders of Egypt and dissipate. The tribesmen have neither the appetite nor the ability to prosecute war beyond their homeland. They are riven by internal jealousies and feuds that will consume them. Beyond the present question of Gordon, the revolt is of little moment to us as we have no interest in occupying the Sudan.’

Mayne watched Kitchener bristle but keep quiet. He reflected on the absurdity of a situation where a flashpoint two thousand miles away in Afghanistan had finally lit a fire under Wolseley, when for months now Gordon’s situation had presented the utmost urgency to all other onlookers, up to the Queen herself. Not for the first time he wondered whether Wolseley’s sluggish operation had been deliberately engineered because the relief of Gordon was always going to be problematic; better to be unsuccessful this way and blame the obstinacy of the man himself, rather than fail spectacularly in a risky dash across the desert to Khartoum.

Wolseley turned to Mayne. ‘You will impress upon General Gordon the urgency of his situation.’

‘Mayne will be able to impress nothing upon General Gordon,’ Kitchener interjected. ‘As you yourself are aware, he is a man of the strongest convictions.’

‘Major Mayne will follow my orders. Brevet Major Kitchener will remember his rank and focus his attention on the map,’ Wolseley said, his voice strained with controlled anger. He waited until Kitchener had resumed sketching in the lines, and then turned again to Mayne. ‘You will impress upon General Gordon the urgency of his situation,’ he repeated. ‘This may well be his last chance of escape. Kitchener himself carried out a reconnaissance of the shoreline at Khartoum in October, and I have used his information to devise a plan. Kitchener?’

Kitchener appeared to ignore Wolseley, concentrating on tracing a line on the map.

‘Major Kitchener, if you please,’ Wolseley exclaimed impatiently.

Kitchener carried on for a few seconds more until he had completed the line, and then pointed to a small structure he had drawn on the bank of the Nile opposite the palace. ‘This is a ruined fort,’ he said. ‘It dates from the time of the Egyptian foundation of Khartoum in the 1830s, but is remarkably similar to a fort of the pharaoh Akhenaten I observed further down the Nile. Studying the ancient fort has helped me to understand its function.’

He eyed Wolseley coldly, then laid his ruler on the map just south of the fort, on a line running across the southern point of Tutti island to the shoreline of Khartoum just north-west of the governor’s palace. ‘To the south of this line, the shore opposite Khartoum is unoccupied by the Mahdi’s forces. At this point the river is some eight hundred yards across, beyond the effective range of their Remington rifles. Instead they’ve occupied Tutti island, close enough for them to fire accurately into the city.’

‘So the fort is abandoned,’ Mayne said, peering over Earle’s head at the map.

‘It should be your objective,’ Kitchener said. ‘If you arrive under cover of darkness, you should be able to get into the ruins unseen, and from there plan your trip across the river to the governor’s palace.’

Wolseley tapped his pencil on the fort. ‘This fort is where you will take Gordon. If you succeed in spiriting him away in disguise from the palace and return across the river without being seen, you can hole up in there until our river steamers arrive. Captain Lord Beresford of the Royal Naval contingent will be under instructions to send a landing party to the fort simultaneously with putting a half-company of troops ashore at the governor’s palace.’

Kitchener had folded his arms and stood aloof, his face set impassively. ‘You may as well order all the troops to make for the fort, as any British soldier who attempts to land at the palace will be shot down by the marksmen on Tutti island.’

‘Or by the marksmen on the palace roof, if Khartoum has already been taken,’ Burnaby added, dropping his cigarette on the floor and crushing it.

‘If Gordon agrees and comes away to the fort, Mayne’s role in his rescue will be exposed once the steamers arrive,’ Earle said. ‘We had agreed to keep his mission secret.’

Wolseley nodded. ‘Beresford will find Gordon alone in the fort, because Mayne will have disappeared into the desert once they see the steamers round the bend of the Nile at Tutti island. Gordon will go along with the secrecy, as the last thing he will want is for the world to see that he has agreed to be spirited away. It must seem as if he crossed the river alone in disguise to await our arrival once he had spotted our steamers coming, from a place where he could then direct an assault against Tutti island and return back into the city at the head of our troops. He must be given the opportunity to see that this could happen, even if events turn out otherwise. The press can then report that his move to the fort was in fact an attempt to rescue Khartoum, and that if he leaves with us it was not of his own volition. His reputation would remain untarnished.’

Buller snorted. ‘Old Charlie Gordon doesn’t care about his reputation any more. All he cares about is his people in Khartoum, and the promises he has made them. He’s their messiah. He’ll go down fighting rather than scuttle out with his tail between his legs. That’s where this plan falls asunder. We’ve left it too late. He won’t want to be rescued.’

Wolseley pursed his lips, and looked at Wilson. ‘Your opinion? You are my intelligence chief.’

Mayne held his breath. Suddenly his mission was on a knife edge. Only he knew the thoughts that would be running through Wilson’s mind, the urgency of keeping Wolseley’s plan on course. Wilson looked up. ‘I defer to Kitchener. He’s the last man here to have seen Gordon.’

Wolseley pursed his lips again, and looked up at the tall man standing impassively opposite him. For once Kitchener was silent, staring at Wolseley with those disarming eyes, his moustache barely twitching. Wolseley turned away and looked at the others.

‘Mayne?’ he said.

Mayne did not dare to glance at Wilson. He could not allow Wolseley to be dissuaded, even though he knew Buller was right. Buller’s scenario was precisely the one that had brought him here. Gordon might die defending Khartoum, but he might also survive and be captured. That could not be allowed to happen.

He spoke confidently. ‘It can be done. Charrière and I can reach the Blue Nile, and I can make my way across to the palace. I know what to say to General Gordon.’

Wolseley nodded curtly. Kitchener leaned over and continued transferring his notes to the map as they watched in silence. When he had finished, he stood up, and Mayne pointed at a series of crosses that he had put along the course of the Nile. ‘What do these mark?’ he asked.

‘Ancient ruins from the pharaonic period,’ Kitchener replied. ‘A passing interest.’

‘A passing irrelevance,’ Wolseley said irritably.

Kitchener pointed to one cross. ‘Not an irrelevance, sir. This cliff face had a bas-relief showing slaves pulling boats over rocks in the river, apparently undertaking the same exercise as General Earle’s river column, without of course the benefit of Mohawks or Kroomen but with many different dark-skinned men among the team.’

Earle looked up incredulously. ‘Are you saying that the ancient Egyptians attempted the same exercise, dragging boats through the cataracts?’

‘The next scene shows them having abandoned the boats and setting out across the desert. Of course, they had no camels then, the camel only having been introduced by the Arabs, but they have horses and chariots and even the slaves are shown striding off confidently.’

‘A lesson for us there, perhaps,’ Buller rumbled, peering at Wolseley.

‘Precisely my plan in ordering out the desert column, though we hedge our bets by keeping the river column going,’ Wolseley said tartly.

Mayne picked up Wolseley’s pencil and put another cross beside the Nile to the south-east of Korti. ‘Yesterday I was shown an underground chamber found by our sappers beside the third cataract,’ he said.

Kitchener looked at him sharply. ‘Any inscription?’

Mayne thought for a moment, and decided not to describe the scene showing the destruction of the Egyptian army. ‘At the far end of one wall was the image of a sun-disc, with its rays carved over the entire relief. In front of it was a man with a distended belly and an elongated face, a pharaoh.’

‘Akhenaten,’ Kitchener breathed, looking over at Wilson. ‘It must be.’

‘I believe so,’ Mayne said. ‘I saw the same disc when we stopped at Amarna on the voyage south through Egypt and visited the excavations there.’

Kitchener spoke directly to Wilson. ‘I will visit this site tomorrow morning.’

‘Right now, you will finish tracing the desert route,’ Wolseley said, his patience clearly wearing thin. ‘You still need to show Mayne a track from Metemma to Khartoum.’

Kitchener stood back from the map. Wolseley tapped the pencilled lines between Korti and Metemma, and then between Metemma and Khartoum, and looked at Mayne. ‘If all goes to plan, Wilson will reach Gordon within a day of your meeting with him, giving Gordon as little time as possible to change his mind if you are able to persuade him to leave. Meanwhile the Mahdi might force our hand by ordering the final assault on Khartoum. But we must take our chances. Whether you succeed or fail, Mayne, you will not wait to return on the steamers, but will make your own way back along the Nile to rejoin General Earle and the river column. If we fail to save Gordon, and one of the press correspondents gets wind of the fact that a British officer had managed to reach him beforehand, then there will be hell to pay. Do you understand?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘It would look like a desperate measure that could only have been ordered by the expedition commander. I would rather the blame went higher up the chain of command in Whitehall. Scapegoats will be sought, gentlemen, you can be sure of it. The press and the public will bay for blood, and those on whom the blame should fall for delaying the dispatch of the expedition will be seeking any sign of weakness in our conduct. If my reputation is tarnished, then so is that of every one of you around this table. Major Mayne’s mission must remain secret, known only to those of us in this tent and to Charrière, who will go with you.’

Mayne stared at Wolseley. He had guessed as much, but he still had to try. ‘Most of the Mohawk contingent have left for Canada. Their job was mainly done after the third cataract, and their contract finished. Charrière will want to go too.’

Wolseley gave him a thin smile. ‘They’re anxious to get back to their wives and families. As you told Buller, Charrière has nothing to go back to. I want you to operate together just as you did on the Red River expedition fifteen years ago, when you observed Louis Riel and his rebels from your hideout for days before the rest of the column arrived.’

Buller slammed his hand on the table. ‘Come on, man. You should relish it. You were a team. He can be your bodyguard, and your tracker.’

‘Colonel Wilson will brief him after this meeting,’ Wolseley said. ‘You are agreeable to this?’

‘Sir.’ Mayne returned an unwavering gaze. He well remembered the two of them lying with their rifles on the ridge above Riel’s encampment. He had been there as Wolseley’s reconnaissance scout, with Charrière as a runner to report back should Riel strike camp and return to the American border. Had Riel mustered his men in preparation for a fight, then Mayne had an entirely different mission, one so sensitive that nobody else knew of it. His friendship with Charrière had always been predicated on what he had been briefed to do that day.

Wolseley carried on. ‘I requested you for this expedition because I anticipated just such a mission. I had General Earle send you on long reconnaissance forays into the desert not only to acclimatise you, but also so that your fellow officers in the column will not think it unusual if you return a few weeks from now after a particularly long absence, dressed and bearded like an Arab and doubtless the worse for wear. And if you do not return, you will not be the first British officer to ride out into the desert and disappear without trace.’

Mayne said nothing, but nodded. He knew who really pulled the strings here. Wolseley had played into Wilson’s hands in almost every detail. The absolute imperative of any mission Mayne carried out for Wilson was anonymity. And he knew that there was one message, one simple code that Wilson could give him that would make his disappearance afterwards a necessity, his ultimate act of duty to Queen and country. The message that would show that he had been given a licence to kill.

Wolseley stood up. ‘Kitchener will give you the maps to memorise. You must take nothing with you that could be traced back here.’

‘Sir.’

Buller reached over to shake his hand. ‘Good luck, Edward. Give Charlie Gordon my regards. If he doesn’t agree to come out, then he can have the damned place as far as I’m concerned.’

Burnaby lit another cigarette, and gave Mayne a languid smile. ‘Best of luck, old boy. Perhaps we’ll meet on the other side.’

Mayne nodded at him, and then turned to follow Wilson and Kitchener to the entrance flap of the tent. Wilson looked back at him intently. ‘You have everything you need? Everything?’

‘I have everything.’

‘Kitchener will answer any questions you might have. Good luck.’ Wilson shook his hand firmly. As he did so, he passed him something, a folded piece of paper which Mayne kept in his hand without looking at it. Wilson turned back into the tent as Kitchener came out. Mayne tensed, the adrenalin coursing through him at last, his hand held tight around the paper. He knew there was no turning back now.

15

Mayne opened the tent flap and stepped outside, waiting for Kitchener to collect the map case and join him. He walked a few paces into the desert, relishing the fresh air after the smoky atmosphere inside, breathing in deeply and smelling the coppery tang the sand exuded after a day in the burning sun, a smell like blood. After the heat of the afternoon the encampment beside the Nile was beginning to stir again, and the soldiers who would make up the desert column were preparing for departure the next day. In the marshalling ground to the south he could hear the snorting and bellowing of more than three thousand camels, along with curses and yells that showed the inexperience of the men who had been detailed to handle them. Beside the river the naval contingent were cleaning and oiling their Gardner machine gun, an unwieldy weapon mounted on a carriage that had already shown its vulnerability to sand and dust. In the distance he could hear the crackle of musketry from the rifle range as the infantry sharpened their skills for what might lie ahead. The picquets of dismounted cavalry he could see on the ridges were a reminder that although Khartoum and the Mahdi were two hundred miles away, dervish spies were everywhere and the troops were vulnerable to sharpshooters and suicide attacks. It was a lesson that the soldiers in the river column had learned all too well the previous day, and one that the desert column would confront soon enough as they struck out across the desolate wasteland to the south.

The sand turned blood-red as the rays of the setting sun streaked across from the south-west. Soon it would be a dazzling spectacle, deep oranges and maroons, the ridges and knolls of the desert framed black as the orb of the sun dropped below the horizon. He remembered first seeing a desert sunset three years before, one evening alone at the pyramids of Giza, when he had arrived in Egypt to carry out intelligence work in the wake of the British invasion. That was when he had first come south, too, though only as far as the border of Egypt at Aswan, before the first cataract of the Nile. The ruins he had seen at sunset there had seemed to draw him further on, and he had tried to imagine what it had been like for those who had gone before, for the ancient Egyptians, the Romans, the Arabs: what it was that had made them go against the flow of the Nile and travel into the land that would so often become their grave. During evenings sitting above the ruins, he had felt as if the red rays were reaching out across the sand, pulling him towards the setting sun and into the dangerous darkness that followed. He thought it had helped him to understand Gordon, to see what it was that could take a man like that and put him in a place that seemed beyond the edge of the world.

He thought about how the archaeology of the Holy Land had motivated those among the officers who were steeped in biblical history. Twenty years before, Wilson had carried out the Ordnance Survey of Jerusalem, intent on improving the water supply but in the process revealing much of its archaeology. He had then worked for the newly formed Palestine Exploration Fund on the survey of Western Palestine and the Sinai, work so highly esteemed that it earned him a Fellowship of the Royal Society. Kitchener’s exhaustive four-year survey of Palestine had made his name before he had any military reputation. And Gordon had been fascinated by Palestine all his life, culminating in the year’s leave he had spent in Jerusalem in 1883 exercising his engineer’s eye to pinpoint to his satisfaction the site of the crucifixion and key locations of the Old Testament. It was a point of similarity between Gordon and the prime minister, also a fervent biblical scholar, except that Gladstone’s religion made him bridle at Gordon’s messianic status in the eyes of the people, and the two men would never publicly acknowledge their shared fascination as scholars.

For these men, the southern desert represented the great unknown: the place of exile, the possible location of the lost tribes of Israel and the ancient hiding place of the Ark of the Covenant. They were fascinated by Akhenaten, whose venture into the desert three thousand years earlier seemed to mirror their own, a pharaoh who had seen the one God, the Aten. The desert seemed a place where those who were lost might be found; a place of redemption. Perhaps these men were not just enthused by the archaeology they came across, but like Akhenaten were seeking a revelation, a flash of insight that might give them a personal vision of God.

Kitchener came up alongside and handed over the map case. ‘Colonel Wilson and I have prepared this for you. Memorise it and return it before you leave. You will take the desert route behind Stewart’s column, aiming for the wells at Jakdul and Abu Klea, and then on to the Nile at Metemma. Cross the river to the east bank, as the Mahdi’s forces occupy the west bank on the approaches to Khartoum. It should take you four days by foot to reach Khartoum from Metemma. You should be able to keep one day ahead of the river steamers carrying Wilson and the rescue force, as there are cataracts that will impede their progress. At Khartoum the river will be low and the mud banks treacherous. You will arrive on the opposite bank from the governor’s palace, beside the island of Tutti. You would do well to find a nuggar boat and make your way across at night. The palace is guarded by Gordon’s Sudanese irregulars but there are plenty of Arabs milling about, and your features are sufficiently dark that you should be able to pass yourself off as a native, with your beard and a headdress.’

‘Tell me, Kitchener. We’re out of earshot of the tent. What do think of our chances?’

‘You’ve seen my high regard for Gordon and my belief that his rescue is possible,’ Kitchener replied pensively. ‘But I am fully aware of the odds against it. In the two years since Hicks set out on his doomed expedition, the Mahdi has captured seven thousand Remington rifles, eighteen field guns, a rocket battery and half a million rounds of rifle ammunition. More than sixteen thousand Egyptian troops have been killed or captured, and our own casualties are now in the hundreds. Only two weeks ago, another force of a thousand Egyptian soldiers and bashi-bazouk policemen were annihilated. Every week more tribal leaders are defecting to the Mahdi. Gordon is defended by Sudanese soldiers whose officers have betrayed them. The telegraph line is cut, there is no heliograph and he is surrounded. The noose is tightening. It would be hard not to believe that he is done for.’

‘Your opinion?’

‘My opinion will not change the course of events. I advise you to look out for yourself. In the desert I carry a cyanide tablet, in case I’m captured.’

Mayne looked towards the clump of palms where Charrière was sharpening his hunting knife on a small whetstone he carried on his belt. ‘That will not be necessary. My bodyguard will see to it that neither of us is captured alive. And he will also spot anyone who tries to follow us.’

‘The desert is different from the forests and rivers of Canada.’

‘It’s the mind of the tracker that matters.’ Kitchener stared at him, and Mayne held his gaze. In some ways Kitchener was the more obvious man for the job, a fluent Arabic speaker who had travelled in disguise deep into the Mahdi’s territory, who had earned his desert credentials. But he had become too visible amongst the tribesmen for a covert operation; Gordon would have been forewarned of his arrival, the element of surprise would have been lost and Gordon might have retrenched and refused to budge. Wolseley had been astute enough to keep Mayne out of the limelight, to give him extensive desert experience but ensure that he was unknown in Khartoum. And yet Wolseley was a pawn in the hands of a more powerful directive. In reality Mayne was not Wolseley’s man, but Wilson’s.

And there was another factor. Mayne’s appointment might rankle with Kitchener’s desire to be in the thick of it, but Kitchener was ruled by intellect rather than instinct; he did not have the near-suicidal disregard for his personal safety of a Burnaby or a Buller.

Kitchener tapped the map case. ‘Gordon will be expecting an officer to try to reach him before the relief force arrives. As you will be disguised as an Arab, you will need a convincing entreaty to gain an audience with Gordon once you reach the palace. I suggest you take along your Royal Engineers cap badge and ask for it to be sent to him. He won’t turn away a fellow sapper.’

‘He might think it comes from you.’

‘He knows well enough that Wolseley will keep me back.’

‘Do you still have spies in the desert, your Ababda bodyguard?’

Kitchener remained expressionless. ‘The Mahdi’s forces have nearly sealed off the city. The east bank of the Blue Nile, where you are heading, is the last remaining point of access, and the river crossing will be perilous. Nobody could do it in daylight without being shot down either by Gordon’s men at the palace or by the dervishes on Tutti island. In answer to your question, I have not had any first-hand intelligence from Khartoum for days.’

Kitchener had not answered his question. Mayne remembered him at the military academy, aloof and uncommunicative. It was impossible to tell whether he was being evasive or simply addressing the issues that he felt to be significant. He was giving Mayne the latest intelligence, that was all. Mayne knew that the networks of spies would now be focused on the opposing armies themselves as they crystallised for war, in front of Khartoum or somewhere in the desert as the British column advanced. With all eyes on troop movements rather than the odd Arab traveller, he might stand a better chance of passing through the desert without being reported by spies of the Mahdi.

‘The Mahdi has fuelled the uprising by playing on the grievances of the tribesmen. None are to be trusted, except my Ababda men.’ Kitchener paused. ‘On another matter, but related. Do you know Captain John Howard?’

Mayne paused. ‘A few years below me at Woolwich. Out with the Madras Sappers in India putting down the Rampa rebellion, and now back at the School of Military Engineering to instruct in survey.’

Kitchener nodded. ‘He’s another who shares my interest in the archaeology of the Holy Land. Colonel Wilson and I have recommended that he be entrusted with the safe keeping of Gordon’s antiquities when they are sent to Chatham, including any from Khartoum that we can salvage. Howard is a scholar and a safe pair of hands. I met him before coming here, and he told me that the Rampa rebellion began as a protest by tribal people against a tax on alcohol, was then hijacked by the nationalists who wanted it to be seen as an uprising against the British, and by the second year had simply become violence for its own sake, with the brigands burning and killing because they enjoyed it. The longer a rebellion is allowed to string out, the more it will become self-fuelling. Men who have been persuaded to become killers learn to love it and do not put down arms easily.’

‘The warrior tradition is strong in the desert.’

‘We must strive to equal it. We are a worthy adversary to warriors of the Mahdi army, whereas the Egyptians and Ottomans are not. The Ansar despise the fellahin of the Nile as poor soldiers who have no taste for war, and in that they are right. An Egyptian army like the one led by Hicks they can wipe out in an easy afternoon. A real army like ours they will throw themselves on with fanaticism, because there is a chance that we might defeat them. The more they encounter us in battle, the more they will return. It is the way of war: the fight becomes the end, not just the means. We may stem the tide temporarily with a good fight or two, but attrition is the only way to stop them and we do not have the manpower.’

‘Wolseley intends us to leave the Sudan to its own devices.’

‘That would be a profound mistake,’ Kitchener said. ‘The jihad could engulf north Africa and the Middle East, just as it did thirteen hundred years ago. It could prove a bigger threat to us than Russia and Europe combined.’

Kitchener closed his empty map case and straightened up, then suddenly held Mayne by the shoulder, his eyes boring into him. ‘If any harm should befall Gordon, I will take a life for each hair on his head. Even if it takes the rest of my career, I will gain vengeance. You mark my words.’

Mayne stared at him, discomfited. They said that Kitchener’s eyesight had been permanently affected by the sand and the desert sun, but that his eyes also showed that he had been seduced by the cruelty of the desert, a place where the value of a man’s life was less than that of the camel he rode on and the handful of grain in his saddlebag.

Kitchener released him. ‘When Khartoum falls, we should expect the worst. The Ansar are a medieval army, and will behave like any other medieval army when they stormed a city. They will rape and pillage, mutilate and torture. The fair-skinned Egyptian women will be the first, the wives and daughters of the Ottoman officials still in Khartoum. They are the ones that Gordon will not leave behind. And then they will kill everyone.’

‘All in the name of Islam.’

‘For the dervishes baying for blood on that day, Muhammad will be about as far from them as Christ was from the crusaders when they took Acre.’

‘Could he convert to Islam? I mean Gordon? Others have done it among the Europeans captured by the Mahdi. The Austrian von Slatin for one.’

‘Von Slatin converted out of desperation to boost the loyalty of his Sudanese troops. It did him little good as they were massacred anyway, but after he was captured his conversion kept him alive. Others among the captured Europeans have done so under duress. Convert, or have your hands and feet chopped off.’

‘You have not answered my question.’

Kitchener paused. ‘The Sudanese credit Gordon with baraka, with mystical healing powers, just as they do the Mahdi. Gordon and the Mahdi are closer than many might think. The Sufi version of Islam that the Mahdi was born into is tolerant and inclusive. The fundamentalism he espouses now is for the jihad, and in person he and Gordon would find common ground. They share a passion for the prophets common to both religions, for Isaiah in particular.’

‘The Mahdi has invited Gordon to join the jihad. My Dongolese guide told me that he even sent him a present of a patched jibba of the Ansar to wear.’

Kitchener snorted. ‘Gordon kicked it across the room in disgust.’

‘And yet he kept it, along with the Mahdi’s other presents.’

‘What are you asking me?’ Kitchener demanded, suddenly haughty again.

‘If Gordon is pushed, which way will his pendulum swing?’

‘You mean has he built his own crucifix, is he standing on a holy rock reaching out to Allah?’

‘Either way he is flying very close to the sun.’

Kitchener squinted at the reddening orb on the horizon. ‘That’s easily done in the desert. You can forgive a man out here for thinking like a pharaoh.’

‘Or like a Mahdi.’

Kitchener pursed his lips. ‘As Christians we have been more savage to those within our faith who do not follow our path than we have been with the infidel. The Mahdi is playing the same game. He has persuaded his followers that the Turkish Muslims are unbelievers because they do not follow the jihad. He knows that in future the jihad will gain strength from this war with moderate Islam. And he knows perfectly well that the true Ansar, his most fanatical followers, only number a small minority now among his army, and that the majority are tribesmen who have been swept up for reasons other than faith. The basis for their fervour in battle is to be sought deep within the history of the desert itself. To keep that fervour stoked, the Mahdi must satisfy the warrior urge for blood, and keep them wanting more. It is a precarious edifice, with weaknesses that one day we might exploit to turn the tide.’

‘Yet not in this campaign.’

‘Each battle for the Mahdi has a parallel in the battles that the Prophet Muhammad fought twelve hundred years ago. As his power develops, the Mahdi is able to shape his own history so that it becomes even more similar. His ultimate aim is to restore the caliphate as he believed Muhammad envisaged it, to discard modern progress and take the world back twelve hundred years.’

‘Using Remington rifles and Krupps field guns.’

‘Means, not ends. Necessary evils to counter the weapons of the unbelievers. All will be discarded when the jihad is over, and the blade and spear will rule supreme again.’

‘Do you think Gordon sympathises with this view of history?’

‘Gordon stands apart from history. But like the Mahdi, he inhabits the world of the foundation of our religion. His time in Jerusalem three years ago was a spiritual journey back to the final days of Christ. And since first arriving in the Sudan ten years ago he has been absorbed by the world of the Old Testament, the time of Moses and Pharaoh and the Exodus from Egypt. He believes that Akhenaten was the pharaoh of the Bible and that Moses received his vision of one God from him. He believes that the vision came to Akhenaten somewhere out here, in the desert.’

‘Those relief carvings I saw, of Akhenaten and the sun-disc,’ Mayne murmured. ‘That’s why you were so interested in them. Have you seen something similar in the desert?’

Kitchener gave him a stony stare. ‘Why do you ask?’

‘Because I know Gordon was searching for images of Akhenaten, and excavated sites in the desert with Heinrich Schliemann during his first period as governor general. My Dongolese guide worked as an interpreter for Gordon before joining me, and his last act before leaving Khartoum was to load crates of antiquities and artefacts on to the steamer Abbas for its voyage to safety. Among them was a stone slab which Gordon had insisted be double-crated and cushioned in cloth. My guide knew of my interest in the ruins and inscriptions we passed in the desert, and he drew me a sketch of the slab showing hieroglyphics and radiating lines like those of the Aten sun-disc.’

Kitchener’s eyes bored into him. ‘Can you reproduce it for me?’

Mayne shook his head. ‘It was a sketch made with a stick in the sand.’

‘You say this slab came from Khartoum?’

‘Gordon himself supervised the loading. Whether it was from Khartoum or from one of Gordon’s expeditions, I do not know.’

Kitchener shook his head, knitting his brow. ‘If he had made such a find earlier, he would have told me. This must be a recent discovery, very recent.’

‘Why would he have thought to tell you? Surely there were far more pressing concerns than antiquities and archaeology.’

Kitchener’s eyes were ablaze. ‘Nothing more pressing, I can assure you.’

‘My guide had left the steamer before Colonel Stewart was murdered, but he watched from the far bank as dervishes swarmed over the wreck and dived into the water. They brought up all the crates they could and prised them open, but threw everything back. He thought they were searching for gold and had no interest in the artefacts.’

‘The stone slab?’ Kitchener demanded.

Mayne shook his head. ‘Apparently it was hidden beneath the boiler, where Gordon insisted it be concealed. It seemed to be his prize possession. My guide saw nothing like that raised before the wreck slipped into deeper water.’

‘So it is still there,’ Kitchener said quietly, more to himself than to Mayne.

‘In the river Nile near Abbas Kortas, close to the west bank, so under the Mahdi’s control, I fear. If you’re thinking of attempting to recover the steamer and Gordon’s belongings, that will have to wait until you are able to lead your army of reconquest into the Sudan.’

‘It is an artefact of the utmost importance,’ Kitchener murmured.

Mayne gazed at him. ‘What is going on? Who else knows about this?’

Kitchener stared at him intently. ‘It is a discovery that is the concern of the highest echelons of power. All I will say is this. Many who support Gordon regard Prime Minister Gladstone as a malign force; but do not do so. He has a great interest in Gordon’s discoveries in the desert. He has taken a gamble with Gordon, one of which Wolseley has no knowledge. For months Gladstone pulled every string to prevent Gordon being reappointed to the Sudan; he was working against what he saw as Gordon’s self-destructiveness. But then Gordon went in private to see Gladstone to tell him about something archaeological he needed to find in the desert that he had come close to tracking down during his previous period in the Sudan, an ancient Egyptian temple. He took me and Colonel Wilson into his confidence. Gladstone was won over by his zeal, and agreed with great trepidation to let him go.’

‘And yet he is at loggerheads with Gordon in public.’

‘Gordon did not keep his end of the bargain. He should have left Khartoum as soon as he had located the inscription, but he did not.’

‘This discovery must have been a pretty large prize.’

Kitchener stared at him, began to speak but then thought better of it. He straightened up and tucked the map case under his arm. ‘If you reach Gordon, he may choose to reveal more. If you do not reach him, then there is no value in you knowing.’

‘I need every point of sympathy with the man and his motivations if I am to persuade him to leave.’

‘If that is truly your purpose.’

‘I follow Lord Wolseley’s orders. You know what those were.’

Kitchener grunted. ‘Do you speak the language?’

‘My guide taught me some of the Beja language, Tu-Bedawi, and I know Arabic.’

Kitchener’s eyes narrowed. ‘An Arabic speaker. You are well prepared.’

‘A war out here was always on the cards. I’m a surveyor, Kitchener, just like you. Learning the language is an essential tool of the trade. ’

‘And you have been preparing for this ever since Gordon first arrived in the Sudan a decade ago.’

‘I go where I am ordered.’

‘Tell me, Mayne, who do you really work for? It is not Wolseley, is it?’

‘The same as you. Queen and country.’

Kitchener paused. ‘You will need Bishari camels. You had better find them before every last camel in lower Sudan is snapped up for Stewart’s desert column.’

With that Kitchener swivelled and abruptly left. Mayne remained for a moment, thinking about what Kitchener had said: If any harm should befall Gordon, I will take a life for each hair on his head. It was heated, emotional, but it was a warning. He thought of Kitchener’s questions about Gordon’s artefacts. He had seen men of reason become irrationally secretive about a shared endeavour, and there was doubtless some trail of discovery that had enthused Gordon in his early days in the Sudan, and with which he had infected Kitchener. But there were now larger matters to hand, and he put the thought from his mind.

He began to walk towards Charrière, remembering his assurance to Wilson that he had everything he needed. The box he had carried from the cataract was among his belongings. In it was a present his uncle had brought him from the American West: a beautiful Spencer rifle with a 34-inch barrel in 50-90 calibre, designed for long-range buffalo shooting. With custom-loaded cartridges using diamond-grade Curtis & Harvey powder, Mayne would be able to hit a man-sized target at over a thousand yards.

From his reconnaissance he knew a place on the river just south of the second cataract that closely replicated the width and conditions of the Nile at their destination; he would go there tomorrow morning, alone. He needed to plan with the greatest of precision when the most accurate shooting was possible: just after dawn, when the air over the river was cool and settled and less likely to disrupt the flight of the bullet. He would need to adjust the Creedmore aperture sights for the range he had seen on the map that Kitchener had shown him. Afterwards he would disassemble the rifle and pack it tightly in its case, with the sights protected against the jolts of the trip ahead. The success or failure of the mission could depend on it.

Mayne’s resolve hardened as he thought again of Gordon. They shared something in common, daunting tasks with little hope of rescue. For Mayne, to succeed was to do his job; to fail was unthinkable. He had always known this, and it was part of the draw. But this time the stakes were higher than they had ever been before. This was not just about one man and a standoff that had riveted the world; nor was it just about Egypt and the Suez Canal, or British prestige in the eyes of Russia or Germany or the Ottoman Empire. It was about something more terrifying than that, about the resurgence of a force from the desert that twelve hundred years before had swept to the very gates of Europe, that would do it again and this time know no bounds.

He remembered the piece of paper Wilson had slipped him as they shook hands. He knew what it was already, but even so he felt his heart pound as he opened it and glanced down. It was a black spot, a smudge of ink, the oldest form of code. He looked up and stared at Charrière. It meant there was no coming back, for either of them.

He crushed the paper in his hand and looked out towards the desert, his eyes narrowing against the dust and the setting sun. He thought about Kitchener’s warning. Sometimes vengeance was possible; sometimes not. That was another thing Wilson had seized on when he had recruited Mayne: the need of a young man to seek retribution, to find meaning and justice for his parents’ death when he knew it never could be found, when all that was left was a yearning to kill.

He remembered Wolseley’s words. If Gordon chooses to stay, then his fate is no longer in your hands.

Wolseley could not have known how wrong he was.