The Alignment: Ingress

CHAPTER 3

The sands of time had erased any trace of the lost palace of the Queen of Sheba. But the stars above revealed an illuminated path for Conrad Yeats to follow in his open jeep across the desert of Sudan to the Nubian pyramids of Meroe.

Every now and then he’d glance up to check the location of the three “wise men”—the alpha stars Arcturus, Spica and Regulus — which formed a triangle framing the constellation Virgo. The “Virgin in the Sky” was a celestial map of the ancient pyramid fields on the ground, which Conrad believed were built to hide the even earlier ruins of the Queen of Sheba’s palace. And where there was once her palace, surely he’d find her tomb below, and inside her tomb the answers he had been searching for his whole life.

For all his achievements as a “post-modern” archaeologist in academia — Conrad believed that the information ancient ruins revealed about their builders was more valuable than the ruins themselves — he was still considered something of a smash-and-grab artist in the field.

This rap disturbed him. Especially as what he was about to do in Meroe would only confirm the worst suspicions about him.

He pulled off the road for a minute, stuffed his pack with the Glock pistol and C4 under his seat, and then drove on.

It was true he often went into a site alone, without a full field crew, to avoid drawing attention and to go for the kill in a single dig. That meant he wasn’t digging holes all over the world like the rest of them. Measure twice, dig once was his motto. So, in effect, he was preserving Planet Earth, if only environmentalists like Serena Serghetti would notice.

And, yes, it was true that once he had “smashed” a find and “grabbed” all its information, he split. He didn’t take artifacts with him, and he wasn’t concerned about “credit” for a find like the university suck-ups. He certainly wasn’t up for sticking around the ruins like they were shrines, or engaging in the endless, self-justifying work of cataloging his discovery for years afterward, publishing paper after paper for research dollars. Or, worst of all, condemning grad students to his digs like chain gangs to bolster his legend.

But what bothered him most was how the irony of it all was lost on his critics: They would have nothing to complain about without the archaeological treasures he left behind for them.

This area of the Nile valley known as Nubia was home to three Kushite kingdoms during antiquity, the last of which was centered in the “Island of Meroe.” It was debatable as to whether or not it actually was an island in the Nile at some point, or whether it appeared that way due to its unique position between the Nile and two other rivers. It had been a thriving city of 25,000 with a great Temple of Isis, a rich gold and iron trade with India and China, and enough wealth and power to rival its northern neighbor Egypt in the ancient world.

The real mystery was where the people of Meroe came from, and why they vanished from history.

Nobody knew.

All that remained of the once-great civilization were the 200-plus Nubian pyramids Conrad could now see rising along the east banks of the Nile like black heaps of rubble against the starry night.

The sandstone block pyramids were much smaller and more sharply angled than those built in Egypt 800 years earlier. Many stood at only half their height thanks to the notorious 19th-century Italian explorer Giuseppe Ferlini who smashed the tops off 40 of them in a quest to find treasure. Despite a haul of some notable jewelry from one of the queen pyramids, however, Ferlini discovered that the graves had already been plundered in ancient times and left to the elements.

Conrad had set off from Sudan’s capital of Khartoum as soon as his plane landed, not stopping to pick up a visitors permit for the pyramids from the Antiquities Service, but drove the whole day, the road following the railway line along the Nile, until he reached the town of Shendi, where he had turned off toward the pyramid fields.

Now at last he arrived at the gate with only his bogus ID from the German Archaeological Institute.

“Entrance fee,” he told the gatekeeper in German, flashing some euros.

The gatekeeper took the money and said, “No cafes, no toilets.”

Conrad nodded. The infrastructure was poor because tourists were in short supply here in Sudan compared to the big pyramids in Egypt. Visitors rarely topped 30 a day, if anyone bothered to show up at all.

Which was exactly what he was counting on tonight.

“I have my own food and drink, and plastic bags,” Conrad told him in Arabic with a made-up German accent.

“You should have the place to yourself,” the gatekeeper said and waved him through.