The Pharaoh's Secret

50

The security supervisor at the Osiris hydroelectric plant remained at the control desk, watching the clock. The images on the computer screen in front of him flickered and changed in their usual monotonous rotation and the supervisor fought off the desire to rest his eyes. Main lot, secondary lot, north exterior, south exterior, then all the internal camera shots. There was no job on earth more boring than watching security video. It was always the same.

As this thought ran through the supervisor’s head, he suddenly felt more awake. A tiny spark of adrenaline had hit him from somewhere.

Always the same.

It dawned on him that the images shouldn’t be the same. He should have seen the technician appear on at least three of the camera feeds as he made his way to the catwalk by the hydro channel to replace the burned-out sensor.

He grabbed the radio and pressed the talk switch. “Kaz, this is base. Where are you?”

After a slight delay, Kaz’s voice responded. “I’m out on the catwalk, replacing the camera.”

“Which way did you go to get there?” the supervisor asked.

“What do you mean?”

“Just tell me!”

“I took the main hall to the east stairwell,” Kaz said. “What other way would I go?”

He’d never appeared on the screen.

“Get back to the stairwell,” the supervisor said. “Hurry.”

“Why?”

“Just do it.”

The supervisor began to drum his fingers. He was suddenly wide awake, his body pulsing with adrenaline.

“Okay, I’m in the stairwell,” the technician called out. “What’s wrong?”

The supervisor flicked through the cameras until he was able to bring up the east stairwell on the screen. The display automatically divided into four quadrants, one camera aiming at each floor. Nothing had changed. “What level are you on?”

“Third floor. I’m standing right here. Can’t you see me?”

The supervisor couldn’t see him. He knew instantly that something was very wrong, something beyond a mere malfunction.

“No, I can’t see you,” the supervisor said. “Is the camera damaged?”

“No,” Kaz said. “It seems to be in fine condition.”

The supervisor put it together. A camera on the hydro channel shorting out. The internal video feed incapacitated and frozen. They had a breach in security. They had an intruder.

He hit the silent alarm button, which would alert the guards, and switched the radio to all channels. “I need the entire building locked down and searched,” he said. “Every square inch. We have a possible intruder, or intruders, and we cannot rely on the cameras or automated systems. You’ll have to search and clear each section of the structure in person.”

Far from the security center of the hydroelectric plant, the intruders had found the two-seat ATV with the roll cage and surprised the black-clad guards sitting in it. They’d taken them out with ease and were dragging the subdued guards down a side tunnel when they discovered the lab.

An outer door made of glass with a rubber seal around its edge was unlocked. Kurt pushed through it. Joe and Renata were right behind him. The two workers in lab coats looked up in shock.

“Don’t move,” Joe said, a pistol in his hand.

The male scientist froze, but the female lunged for an alarm or intercom button. Renata tackled her and knocked her cold.

“Amazing how often people move right after you tell them not to,” Joe said.

Kurt turned to Renata. “Remind me to keep you close next time I’m in a bar fight.”

Across from them, the man kept his hands up, practicing a policy of nonconfrontation.

“You’re a scientist, I assume,” Kurt said.

“Biologist,” the man said.

“American? Your name?”

“Brad Golner.”

“You work for Osiris,” Kurt said. “Back in the real world, in a pharmaceutical division.”

“I was hired to work in the lab in Cairo. There’s also a lab in Alexandria,” he said. “Zia works with me.” He pointed to the unconscious woman.

“But the special projects happen down here, don’t they?” Kurt said.

“We don’t have a choice. We do what we’re told.”

“Neither did the Nazis,” Kurt said. “I’m guessing you know why we’re here and what we’re after.”

Golner nodded slowly. “Of course. I’ll show you what you want.”

The biologist led Kurt through the lab, which seemed wholly out of place in the ancient tunnel complex. It was brightly lit and filled with modern equipment, including centrifuges, incubators and microscopes. The floor, walls and ceiling were covered in shiny antiseptic plastic, which made it easier to sterilize if there was some accident. Deeper in the core, they came to a glass-walled air lock that separated a smaller section of the room from the main lab.

Then Golner walked toward the air lock and raised his hand to the keypad.

“Careful,” Kurt said, moving in behind him and jabbing the pistol in the man’s back. “Unless you can survive without your liver.”

The biologist raised his hands up again. “I don’t want to die.”

“That makes you the first nonfanatic I’ve encountered on this trip.”

Standing in front of the air lock, Kurt glanced back at Joe and Renata. “Strip the guards down,” he said. “Get into their fatigues. I have a feeling we’re going to be hightailing it out of here. Might as well look like we own the place.”

They nodded and dragged Zia and the two men deeper into the lab.

Kurt turned back to the biologist. “Slowly, now.”

The man typed in a code and the air lock opened with a soft hiss. He stepped through. Kurt followed.

Kurt had assumed he’d find refrigerated shelves lit from behind and stocked with tiny glass vials and test tubes, probably with a biohazard symbol marked on them. Instead, they passed through a second door and entered another large room in the cave with a broad dirt floor. It was sweltering inside, dry as a bone and illuminated by blazing-red heat lamps. It looked like the surface of Mars.

In the main control room, far from the lab, Shakir, Hassan and Alberto Piola stood in front of a bank of computer screens that covered an entire wall. The screens displayed the interconnected network of pumps, wells and pipelines drawing water from the deep aquifer and delivering it to the Nile.

On another wall, charts and diagrams represented a different project, one that had required Shakir’s men to map the labyrinth of tunnels around them.

“I’m amazed at this place,” Piola said. “How extensive are the tunnels?”

“We’re not certain,” Shakir replied. “They continue beyond anything we’ve explored. The pharaohs mined gold and silver from here and then salt and natron. There are hundreds of tunnels we’ve yet to explore, not to mention fissures and rooms in the cave system.”

Piola had never been here. He’d taken most of what Shakir promised on faith—with a large helping of cash. “And all of this was flooded when you found it?”

“The lower levels were,” Shakir said. “We began to pump them out and discovered ancient drawings indicating that the water bubbled up periodically. That’s how we found the aquifer — it’s fairly close to the surface here, but it runs deeper as it goes west.”

Piola’s eyes sharpened as they got down to business. “So the aquifer covers the entire Sahara?”

“Better to say that the Sahara covers it,” Shakir insisted. “But, yes, all the way to the border of Morocco.”

“How can you be sure the other nations won’t discover or tap into it? Digging deeper than they have so far?”

“The geology makes it difficult to locate,” Shakir said, “though, eventually, they’ll find it.” He shrugged as if it didn’t matter. “By then, we’ll control them, directing and governing an empire stretching from the Red Sea to the Atlantic. Even Morocco will fall. My grasp will encompass all of North Africa, and you and your friends will get access to everything — for a fair price, of course.”

“Of course,” Piola said, grinning. His stake in several mining companies and an oil development partnership was hidden, but they would be very lucrative once the contracts started falling their way.

“And how did you find this tomb in the first place?” he asked. “Surely archaeologists have been looking for anything like this for the last century at least.”

“No doubt,” Shakir said. “Except that there is almost no record of this place. We learned of it only after an archaeologist on the antiquities board brought us several fragments of papyrus. That led us to search for items the French and British took, but the key was found on the bottom of Aboukir Bay. It told of how Akhenaten brought the bodies of the old pharaohs from their tombs and moved them to new places where they could be illuminated by the rising sun. And how the priests of Osiris considered this an abomination. They one-upped Akhenaten, stealing the sarcophaguses of the twelve kings in the burial chamber and bringing them here before Akhenaten’s people got to them.”

“And how did you discover the Black Mist?”

“The tablets from Aboukir Bay led us here,” Shakir explained. “The writings we found led us to the secret of the Mist. They told us how the priests of Osiris sailed once a year to the Land of Punt to recover what they needed to make the serum. Of course we had to modify it, but that led us to ways of improving it.”

“Which are?”

Shakir chuckled. “Be glad I haven’t slipped and told you, Alberto, otherwise I’d have to feed you to the crocodiles.”

Piola held up a hand. “Never mind. I just hope your demonstration was enough to convince our friends that resisting will only get them killed.”

“I’m sure it has,” Shakir said confidently. “But the question is: what happens afterward? Libya is fractious. It would be helpful if you were able to push through a vote in your parliament establishing a protectorate over the country once it has fallen apart. A joint Egyptian — Italian operation would allow us to enforce order.”

“We need more votes,” Piola said. “I can’t get them without something to offer. I need another shipment of the Mist to replace the one that was destroyed on Lampedusa. If we can coerce ten additional ministers, the vote will swing our way. We may even be able to form a new government with me as Prime Minister.”

Hassan broke in. “A new batch is being prepared,” he said. “But it’ll do no good if the Libyans reject our help. Even though they appear to be teetering, they refuse to fall.”

Shakir nodded. “We need to make it worse for them.”

“Can you?” Piola asked. “I understand that the main sources of water have been shut off, but some of the smaller stations are still producing. And there’s a large desalinization plant near Tripoli that’s been running at full capacity.”

“I’ll have someone put that plant out of action,” Shakir said. “And we can boost our draw on the aquifer, running the pumps continuously instead of in spurts. In twenty-four hours, the Libyans won’t have a cup of water to share, let alone enough to fight over.”

“That should break them,” Piola agreed.

Hassan approved. “And it’ll give us an excuse to move in. Much better if our soldiers are seen bringing water to thirsty families instead of storming in with guns drawn.”

Shakir nodded. Thousands more would die. Maybe tens of thousands. But the end result would be the same. Egypt would control Libya. Egyptian proxies would control Algeria and Tunisia. And Shakir would control them all.

“So it’s agreed,” Piola said. “In that case, I’ll leave for Italy immediately.”

Before anything else was said, a hardwired phone buzzed. Hassan answered it. He spoke briefly and then hung up. His face looked grim.

“That was Security at the hydroelectric plant,” he said. “They’ve had a breach. They’ve been looking for an intruder without success. But they’ve just discovered that one of the tramcars is missing. They found it in the tunnel, a hundred feet from the Anubis access point.”

Shakir pursed his lips. “Which means they don’t have an intruder. We do.”

Kurt walked into the Mars-like landscape, enduring waves of heat from the glowing red lamps.

“This is our incubator,” Golner said.

“Incubator for what?” Looking around, all he saw was desiccated soil, with hundreds of little mounds protruding from it in a precise geometric pattern. “What are you growing in here?”

“Nothing’s growing,” the biologist said. “Sleeping. Hibernating.”

“Show me.”

Golner led Kurt to one section of the room, stepped off of the path and crouched down beside one of the small mounds. With a garden trowel, he brushed away the loose soil and dug out a softball-sized dirt clod. He scraped the soil from the sphere and then began peeling a layer off of it.

Kurt half expected a squirming alien creature. But as the outer layer was removed, it revealed a bloated, semimummified frog or toad.

“This is an African bullfrog,” the biologist said.

“I saw hundreds of those in the catacombs.”

“This one is alive,” the biologist said. “Just dormant. Hibernating. Like I said.”

Kurt considered the statement. In colder climates, things hibernated in the winter, but in Africa going dormant was a way to survive the droughts. “Hibernating,” Kurt repeated, “because you stuck him in the mud and turned on the heat?”

“Yes, that’s correct. The excess heat and lack of humidity cause the frogs to enter a survival mode. They burrow into the mud and grow extra layers of skin, which dry up and seal them in like a cocoon. Their bodies go dormant, their hearts virtually stop beating and they become entombed, with only their nostrils remaining clear so they can breathe.”

Kurt was astonished. “This is where the Black Mist comes from? Dormant bullfrogs?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“How does it work?”

“In response to the dry conditions,” Golner explained, “glands in the frogs’ bodies produce a cocktail of enzymes, a complex mix of chemicals, that triggers dormancy at the cellular level. Only the lowest part of the brain remains active.”

“Like a human brain in a comatose state.”

“Yes,” the biologist said. “It’s almost identical.”

“So you and your team extracted this chemical cocktail from the frogs and modified it to be effective on human biology.”

“We adjusted the chemicals to be effective on larger species,” Golner said. “Unfortunately, that shortens the shelf life. If it’s frozen at subzero temperatures, it can be kept indefinitely. But at room temperature it will become inert in eight hours. When released into the air, it will dissipate within two to three hours, breaking down into simple organic compounds.”

“That’s why they found no trace of it on Lampedusa,” Kurt said.

Golner nodded.

“That’s a very short-lived weapon,” Kurt noted.

“It wasn’t supposed to be a weapon. Not at first. It was a treatment. A way to save lives.”

Kurt didn’t really believe that, but he let the man explain. “How so?”

“Doctors use medically induced comas all the time. For trauma victims, burn victims and others who’ve experienced tremendous injuries. It’s a way to allow the body to heal. But the drugs are very dangerous. They’re damaging to the liver and kidneys. This drug would be natural, less harmful.”

He sounded like a true believer and a man trying to convince himself both at the same time.

“I hate to say it, Brad, but you’ve been sold a bill of goods.”

“I know,” Golner replied. “I should have known anyway. They kept asking about methods of delivery. Could it be dissolved in water? Could it be disbursed in the air? There was no medical reason to ask such questions. Only weapons need be distributed in these ways.”

“So why keep working on it?”

“Some of the others raised questions and promptly disappeared,” Golner said.

Kurt understood. “I’ve seen how Shakir treats those who cross him. It’s my intention to put an end to that.”

“It won’t be that easy,” Golner said sadly. “Soon, the whole process will be automated. They won’t even need me.” He put the bullfrog back down in its hole. “Come with me.”

They went through another air lock and emerged in a typical research lab. Clean, dark and quiet, filled with refrigerators and lab tables on which small centrifuges were slowly spinning.

Brad Golner checked the first one and then the second. “The new batch isn’t quite ready,” he said, moving from the centrifuge to one of the stainless steel refrigerators. He opened the door and cool mist poured out. Reaching in, he pulled a few vials from a freezer, placed them in a Styrofoam box and then added cold packs all around it.

“You have about eight hours before it warms up past the critical temperature. After that, it’s no good.”

“How do I use it?” Kurt said.

“What do you mean use it?”

“To revive the people on Lampedusa,” Kurt said. “The ones Shakir put into a coma.”

Golner shook his head. “No,” he said urgently. “This isn’t the antidote. It’s the Black Mist.”

“I need the antidote,” Kurt explained. “I’m trying to wake people up, not put them to sleep.”

“They don’t make it here,” Golner said. “They won’t allow us to. Otherwise, we’d know too much. We’d be a threat.”

Another way for Shakir to keep his people off balance and subservient, Kurt thought. “Do you know what it is?”

Golner shook his head again.

“You might not know,” Kurt said. “But you can guess.”

“It would have to be some form of—”

Before the biologist could finish his sentence, the door behind them swung open. The red glow from the Mars-like incubation room spilled into the storage facility. Kurt knew it wouldn’t be Joe or Renata. He dove to the side immediately, grabbing Golner as he went and trying to pull him out of harm’s way.

He was a fraction too slow. Several gunshots rang out. One bullet grazed Kurt’s arm, two others hit the biologist squarely in the chest.

Kurt pulled Golner behind one of the centrifuge tables. He was barely breathing. He seemed to be trying to say something. Kurt leaned close.

“… The skins… put in hermetically sealed container… picked up every three days…” Golner tensed as if a new wave of pain had stricken him and then he relaxed and his body went still.

“Kurt Austin,” a much louder voice boomed from the open doorway.

Kurt remained on the floor, behind the table. He was hidden from view, but the thin wooden cabinetry of the table wouldn’t stop a bullet. He expected to be shot at any moment. But it didn’t happen. Maybe the men didn’t want a shoot-out in the midst of their toxin-filled lab.

“You have me at a disadvantage,” Kurt shouted back.

“And that’s where you’ll stay,” the voice replied.

Kurt glanced around the corner of the table. He spotted a trio of silhouettes in the doorway. He guessed the silhouette in the center was Shakir, but with the red glow of the incubation room lighting them from behind, the three men looked more like the devil and his minions come to collect a long-outstanding debt.