The Alignment: Ingress

CHAPTER 9

A douse of acrid liquid from an urn brought Conrad back from the dead. He blinked his wet eyes open. He was inside a dark cellar, battered and bruised and sore all over. A shaft of moonlight filtered through the iron grill of a round window onto the black and white tiles of the floor. He was sitting in a wrought-iron chair, his feet clapped in leg irons and his hands in chains. He could stand up if he wanted to, but he wouldn’t get far.

“Welcome to the afterlife, Doctor Yeats,” said a voice with a thick Egyptian accent.

Conrad looked up to see a stranger in an Egyptian military uniform tower over him, his hands on his two pearl-handled Colt six-shooters. But there was something familiar about his voice.

“Where am I?” he demanded.

“Outside Cairo,” the Egyptian said. “My family villa. We’ve had the land since the 25th Dynasty, long before the wheelbarrow taught your ancestors how to stand on their hind legs.”

Conrad looked around the cellar. Behind the officer stood two soldiers. They were leaning against the stark white wall. He wondered how long he had been in this place, and why the proverbial U.S. Marines hadn’t arrived yet. A remote server was programmed to emit a distress call if his phone failed to sync every four hours, and it had certainly been more than four hours from the time of his capture in Meroe.

The officer seemed to read his mind. “Your phone, by the way, is on its way to Timbuktu at this moment, Yeats. Unfortunately, you won’t be there to be rescued.”

Well, that explained that. “How did I get here?”

“The Egyptian army has had close ties with the Sudanese for decades, centuries really,” the officer told him. “I’ve trained many of them, just like your father the American general trained my generation of officers under a special program years ago.”

“My father?” Conrad repeated, confused.

“Yes, he wants you back in Washington. It’s funny, you know. The CIA often used this cellar for tortures and renditions. Now tell me, what has my pathetic, weak brother put you up to in Nubia?”

Suddenly Conrad got it. He was looking at Abdil Zawas’s even more ruthless brother, Colonel Ali Zawas of Egypt’s elite Republican Guard.

Why can’t I get away from these people?

“You’re the one with the special friends in Nubia, Zawas,” he said, trying to work his situation out in his head. “You mean to tell me they found nothing in the tomb?”

“Only a tale about a medallion that you found and that the Vatican’s Sister Serghetti took off with — along with one of my choppers.” Zawas talked like he actually admired her. “I swear that pretty little desert flower is one of the Dei.”

“The Dei?” Conrad asked, playing dumb. Maybe Zawas knew something he didn’t know.

“Dominium Dei — the Rule of God,” Zawas stated, as if he couldn’t imagine the great Conrad Yeats had not heard of it. “A centuries-old order from Roman times. They know more about Egypt and the Ancient Mysteries than we do. They have been hiding everything from us, keeping us in the dark, laughing at us. And now they possess the very necklace worn by the Queen of Sheba herself.”

She lied to me!

“You’re sure there was absolutely nothing else in the tomb?” he pressed. “Nothing in the burial or treasury chambers?”

“Only this, Doctor Yeats.” Zawas held up the decapitated head of the statue of Isis. “What good is this to me except to break over your skull? Will that help your memory?”

Conrad braced himself as the bust came down and a shockwave of pain exploded through his head. He saw pieces of something on the tile and was sure it was his head. But apparently his skull hadn’t cracked, because Zawas looked disappointed and tossed the head of Isis back to one of his minions.

Conrad groaned in pain. His head was pulsing.

Zawas leaned over. “The least you can do is tell me what my brother has done with my money.”

“Blown it all on booze and babes,” Conrad said. “You know Abdil.”

Zawas drew one of his Colts and pistol-whipped the pearl butt across Conrad’s face. “Tell me what I don’t know, Yeats!”

Conrad spat out blood. “He says you’re still honked off that he absconded with the family fortune to Switzerland before the Arab Spring. He’s sorry that you and your comrades here have to serve the government of the Islamic Brotherhood. But it’s your own fault because you’re a loser and deserve it.”

“The mullahs won’t last for long. Mark my words. The pharaohs will return to Egypt. We will make Egypt great again.”

“Tell me when they do, Zawas, because I don’t see any here.”

Zawas smiled. “I was warned about you, Conrad Yeats. You make everything a joke.”

“Not everything, Zawas. You did a good job on yourself.”

“We’ll see how funny you think Doctor Omar is in the morning. He’s a real doctor, not like you,” Zawas said. “He’ll get you to talk, tell me more about this medallion made out of a fiery black metal. A medallion that could lead me to the Queen of Sheba’s gold.”

“Gold?” Conrad asked. “That’s what this is all about? You’re just after money?”

“Of course I want gold. Who would take the American dollar? I would use it to blow my nose if it were more absorbent,” Zawas said. “At one time it was pegged to gold and worth something. Then President Nixon went off the gold standard. It was Henry Kissinger who, with my family’s advice, got the Saudis to peg the U.S. dollar to oil. The House of Saud and the United States have been joined at the hip since, all thanks to the petrodollar. Any country that wants to buy oil has to pay for it in U.S. dollars. The United States, meanwhile, can simply print those dollars to buy its oil.”

“And all good things must come to an end, is that it?”

“Yes, especially now the Russians and Chinese have moved to price oil in currencies other than dollars. If that should actually happen, if the U.S. dollar is no longer backed by the price of oil, then it becomes what we all know it already is — worthless. And all of Uncle Sam’s billions in aid to Egypt’s armed forces, outside of hardware, evaporates.”

“And you think some gold mine is going to save you?”

“No. I think the alchemy that creates gold is going to save me. And Doctor Omar is going to get it out of you.”