Raiders

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

The US presence in Egypt had a long and rich history, stretching back to the summer of 1830 when a merchant from Philadelphia named Charles Rhind signed a trade treaty with the Egyptian Government. Giving the US most-favored-nation status, the treaty allowed America to trade openly with the entire Ottoman Empire. The Consulate was opened five years later in Alexandria, and the use of the port exploded when demand for Egyptian cotton increased during the American Civil War. After a period of closure, the consulate reopened in 2016 in the Helnan Palestine Hotel in the city’s Montazah area.

Now, Jed Mason and the other Raiders were sitting in a non-descript office in the rear of the consulate, working on their plan to retrieve the Book of Spells and patiently waiting for Ezra’s “helping hand”. This turned out to be three former Delta officers, all of whom were on first-name terms with Caleb Jackson thanks to their post-army careers in the CIA and NSA.

Caleb and the men exchanged a quick smile and after a round of meaty handshakes, he introduced them to the rest of the team. “Meet John Garrett, Chuck Ikard and Don French,” he said. “Me and these guys go way back. Guys, meet my new crew. We call ourselves the Raiders.”

“You’re the guys who jumped off the bridge in Rome, right?” Garrett said, holding his iPhone up to show them the front page of the Italian newspaper, La Republicca. “Looks like you’re famous.”

Mason and Zara gave an apologetic shrug.

“Hey, we got the codex,” Zara said at last.

“Ezra’s not too happy about the publicity,” Caleb said.

Zara sighed. “Ezra can kiss my…”

“Anyway,” Garrett said. “Let’s move on.”

Following a few pleasantries and some jokes about life at Fort Bragg, the expanded team soon got down to the business at hand. Mason had full confidence that three NSA operatives and former 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment soldiers would have no trouble slotting into the team and he was grateful for the extra manpower. Maybe Ezra Haven had a use after all.

“Tell us, Dr Starling,” Garrett said firmly. “You had time to study the codex on the flight from Rome. What does it tell us exactly?”

Eva looked at the map in the rear of the codex once again, her eyes widening as she made sure she had the translation right. She had opened the codex on the plane with the help of the ankh, which she slotted into the hole in its cover. Seeing it for the first time in centuries was already one of her career highlights. “The first thing it told me was to come here to Alexandria. As we had speculated, the codex is mostly written by an ancient Egyptian priest named Parennefer, and he was very clear about it being in Alexandria.”

“Go on, please.”

“Since we landed I’ve had more time to study it, and I think I understand it now. Parennefer writes here that he moved the Book of Thoth somewhere where the new Christian authorities would never find it, and I can hardly believe I’m saying this, but he says he hid it inside Cleopatra’s tomb.”

“Cleopatra’s tomb?” Mason said. “Bugger me! That’s one of the greatest missing historical relics of all time.”

“Cleopatra wasn’t a saint, Jed,” Eva said.

“I’m sorry?”

“Relics are the personal belongings or even physical remains of saints. We’re talking about a tomb containing the body of Cleopatra, who was a queen.”

“This is the problem with having an archaeologist around,” Zara said with a wink. “Sooner or later they’re going to make you look like a total idiot.”

“Hey,” Milo said. “Jed doesn’t need Eva to make him look like an idiot. He can do that perfectly well on his own.”

“All right, all right,” Mason said. “Dial it down. I’m still the only one here who can pull off aviator shades. Remember that.”

“Aaaand, back to Cleopatra,” Eva said.

“Oh yeah,” Caleb said drily. “Let’s do that. Just imagine I’m like my old friend Jed, here, and run me through Cleopatra for Dummies.”

“First, she was Greek, and her full name was Cleopatra VII Philopator.”

“She was Greek?” Milo said. “You learn something new every day.”

“That’s not hard starting from your baseline,” said Virgil.

“Yes, she was Greek,” Eva continued. “But she spoke Egyptian too. She learned it for her people, along with all their religious rituals. Essentially she became a kind of Isis, a sort of goddess. Back then it was important for rulers to be seen as divine, or at least appointed by the divine.”

“Where’s the popcorn?” Milo said cynically.

“Zip it, Miles,” Zara said. “I’m interested in this stuff. Some of us never got a decent education, got it?”

“Sorry, Z.”

Eva continued. “And she wasn’t the only Cleopatra. Her mother was Cleopatra V of Egypt, for example, but history remembers her so much because of her relationships with Julius Caesar and Mark Antony, and the fact she was the last ruler of the Ptolemaic Kingdom of Egypt.”

“What’s the significance of that, sorry?” said Ella.

“The Ptolemaic Kingdom was a period of Hellenistic rule in Egypt.”

“Helen who?” Zara said.

“Hellenistic,” said Eva. “It means Greek.”

“So say Greek if you mean Greek.”

“Thanks for your input Zara,” Eva said. “I’ll be sure to publish an article in the American Journal of Archaeology about how we all have that wrong and be sure to change it.”

“You’re welcome.”

“So what was so special about Helen’s Greece?” Caleb said, winking.

Eva returned his smile. “This is when Egypt starts to change from the one we all think of, pyramids and mummies and pharaohs, and slowly starts to shift, first to Greek culture and then into Roman and Byzantine. It’s a critical time in the history of Egypt and Cleopatra was right there front and center during the pivotal point.”

“When did she die?” Mason asked.

“30 BC,” Eva said. “She was only thirty-nine. She died just a few days after Mark Antony killed himself by falling on his sword. He did it because he thought Cleopatra had already died. Her death is one of the great mysteries of our entire history. Orthodox opinion has always recorded that she killed herself with an asp bite, but some revisionist theories suggest she was murdered by Octavian. It was a bloody and electric few days in history.”

“And her tomb has never been found, huh?” Don French said.

“Their tomb,” Eva corrected him. “Cleopatra and Mark Antony were buried together.”

“I thought it had been found?” Ella said.

Eva shook her head. “No, but plenty of people claim they’ve found it. The most famous of which is the site at Taposiris Magna, a ruined, ancient city just to the south of Alexandria. The name refers to both the city and a temple there, and there is some evidence pointing to Cleopatra but the jury’s still out.”

“Nothing concrete, huh?” Caleb said.

“Not yet — not unless you count this.” She lifted Parennefer’s map and a smile widened on her face. “Our priest friend is very clear that the tomb is in the Catacombs of Kom El Shoqafa.”

“The what?”

“The Catacombs of Kom El Shoqafa, Eva repeated, slower. “It’s an ancient necropolis and a very famous archaeological site.”

A tense silence filled the space at the end of Eva’s sentence. She wondered if any of them truly realized the gravity of the situation. If the map could really lead them to Cleopatra and Mark Antony’s tomb, that alone would shatter the world of archaeology. The contents of a tomb of this significance might even change world history, and that was before you started thinking about something as ancient and dangerous as the Book of Thoth.

They had rescued her in Frankfurt, and watching them at work in London, Oxford and Paris has been an eye-opener in terms of how the evils of kidnap and theft were fought, but none of them had any real experience with the ancient world and priceless archaeological or historical treasures. It looked like they really were a team who needed each other. They needed her and she needed them, and for the first time since this nightmare had begun back in Boston she could really understand why Linus Finn and the Hidden Hand were so desperate to win this fight.

“Looks like we’ve got our hands full then,” Zara said. “Book of Thoth, Cleopatra’s tomb and an unspecified terror threat somewhere in Africa that could kill millions… if saving the world is our new mission statement, Jedediah Mason, I’m going to need a big raise.”

A low rumble of laughter went around the small team but Eva could feel something approaching anxiety among them, not least in herself. Things were moving up a gear and she started to get the impression they were setting out on a one-way road. The sort of people who lurked in the ranks of Occulta Manu were unlikely to forget an enemy, least of all one who had killed their own.

Ezra Haven had been very clear about the extent of their reach, and how high their influence went in government and international agencies. Was she really ready to have her life trashed like this? Up until Kyle Cage had kidnapped her she had been happy in her life as an archaeologist researching quietly for Ezra on the side, but now she could see that was rapidly turning into her former life.

“So when do we get started?” Virgil said.

“It’s not that simple,” Eva explained.

“Problem?” said Garrett.

“The main issue is that Cairo will never give permission to drill out a section of the catacomb walls without a lengthy application process. The Supreme Council of Antiquities is a strict regulator of all archaeological works in the country, and anyone with a professional need to excavate in Egypt needs to contact the council and secure its permission first.”

“I’m not liking the sound of this,” Mason said. “First, we have to break into the Vatican Secret Archives and now you seem to be telling us we have to blow our way into the catacombs, too.”

“I’m sorry, Jed,” Eva continued. “Even in normal circumstances this is a long and arduous process, but right now the Ministry of Culture is cracking down and has even banned all new excavations in Upper Egypt. Luckily, Alexandria isn’t in this region, but the chances of securing a permit at all are low, and in the next twenty-four hours the chance is zero.”

“So there’s definitely no way we can get a permit?” Ella asked.

Eva shook her head. “Applications have to be submitted at least three months ahead of the dig. They’ll want to see what the mission objectives of the excavation are, the names of everyone involved, exactly where and when we’ll be digging, you name it — they want it, in triplicate, signed in our blood.”

“This is a nightmare,” Mason said with a heavy sigh.

“It gets worse. When they get the application it then goes to the Permanent Committee of the Supreme Council for review, and it can move glacially slow — believe me, I’ve been through it many times. If we want to get into the catacombs in a hurry then we’re going in without permission.”

“And that’s against the law in a big way, I’m guessing?” Milo said.

“Oh yeah,” Eva replied. “The Egyptian Law on the Protection of Antiquities goes back to the early eighties. Excavating without government sanction can get you sent to jail for two years, and thieves smuggling antiquities out of the country get jail time with hard labor and a fifty thousand dollar fine. It’s not recommended.”

“Which is why we’re here,” Ella said. “Breaking into places is our bread and butter.”

“But getting in is usually the easy part,” said Caleb. “Looks like if we do the catacombs none of us is coming back to Egypt.”

“We don’t get caught,” Mason said. “We never have and we never will. We go in and out and we’re on the plane.”

“Damn right,” said Zara. “If we can get inside the Vatican’s Secret Archives we can do anything, remember what we said?”