This was no longer a natural cave. The shaft they were following now was man-made, dug with amazing precision out of the solid rock. The walls were covered in faded paintings, strange images that didn’t look familiarly Egyptian to Ben.

‘I don’t know who carved this passage out,’ Kirby said. ‘But it wasn’t Wenkaura.’

‘You’re sure?’

‘Sure as I’ll ever be. Look at these images. I’ve never seen anything like them before. These are nothing any scholar would recognise. Some Predynastic culture built this place. Or Nubian, or some other civilisation we don’t even know about. It’s incredible. How Wenkaura found this place, we’ll never know.’

A loud, echoing series of rumbling cracks made them spin around. Ben watched as a thin fissure slowly spread across the tunnel wall beside him and part of a painted image crumbled away.

‘This can’t be good,’ Kirby murmured. ‘The place is falling apart.’

Thirty yards further on through the dark, winding shaft they came to a dead end. The wall that blocked the tunnel was covered in ancient cobwebs and dust. ‘Hold this.’ Ben thrust the torch into Kirby’s hands and brushed away the webs, revealing the cracks between stone blocks. ‘There are more markings here. And these are definitely Egyptian.’

Kirby came up close. The firelight sent dark shadows into the carved hieroglyphs in front of them.

‘Can you read it?’

Kirby’s mouth dropped open. ‘Oh, God.’

‘Can you read it?’ Ben repeated impatiently.

Kirby turned. ‘It says, “Amun is content. The treasure is restored.” This is it. We found it.’

‘Then let’s see what we’ve got.’

‘Where are we going?’

‘Straight through this wall,’ Ben said. He took the blazing rifle from Kirby and swung the stock hard at the wall. The crash of solid wood on stone echoed through the tunnel. A block moved, maybe an eighth of an inch.

He swung the rifle again. The torch went out, and they were in darkness. ‘Stand back.’ He hit it again, blind. There was a crash of something falling. He kept swinging and swinging until the rifle stock broke and clattered to the stone floor. He felt for another strip of cloth, wrapped it around the barrel, flicked open his lighter and relit it.

He smiled at what he saw. There was now a hole in the wall just about big enough to crawl through. He stooped down beside it, and felt a sigh of warm air escaping from the chamber inside. Dust particles hovered in the torchlight.

‘Here we go,’ Kirby said. ‘Monte Carlo or bust.’

Ben took a deep breath and crawled through into the darkness. Shone the torch at a floating mist of dust.

Kirby struggled through the hole and jumped up to his feet. ‘What do you see?’ he whispered.

‘Nothing,’ Ben said.

But then, as the dust slowly settled, he could see.

Chapter Fifty-Five

The details of the room gradually emerged from the mist. Strange forms seemed to lurk in the shadows. Ben narrowed his eyes and raised the torch higher as he stepped carefully deeper into the chamber. He was suddenly aware that he’d stopped breathing for a few seconds. He blinked, caught his breath, blinked again.

Sitting like a silent council of elders presiding over the huge chamber were a circle of giant seated statues. The light of the flames rippled over their perfect contours and threw back the glint of gold. The faces of the golden statues seemed to peer curiously out of the darkness that had surrounded them for thousands of years. They weren’t human, and they weren’t animal. They were the animal gods: the falcon-beaked face of Ra. Bastet, the cat goddess. The fanged snout of Sobek, the Ibis head of Thoth. The refugees from the religious dictatorship of Akhenaten threw long, flickering shadows on the chamber walls.

The space at their feet was stacked ten-foot high with an endless profusion of objects. It was enough to fill a museum. A golden jackal lay watching them from a plinth. Gold caskets and vases and magnificent cups everywhere, stone urns decorated with polytheistic images and brimming with sparking gold coins, jewels, amulets, pendants and rings, bracelets and crowns. Gold falcons and ankhs, gold shields. There was gold everywhere, unseen and untouched for millennia, smooth and sparkling and beautiful.

Kirby let out a strangled cry. He ran forward and plunged his hands into one of the urns. Filled his fists with precious artefacts and rubbed them over his face. ‘I found it,’ he mumbled over and over again. ‘I found it. I’m rich.’ He slipped a gold bangle the size of a dumbbell weight over one wrist, admired it with flashing eyes for a moment, grabbed a gold necklace and hung it around his neck. He cupped his hands and dipped them up to his elbows in glittering coins, brought out a piled handful and watched, mesmerised, as they slithered through his fingers. ‘It’s too much,’ he whispered. ‘It’s unbelievable.’

Ben watched in the torchlight as Kirby danced from one corner of the chamber to the other, touching and caressing everything, wild with excitement. In his gold fever the historian seemed to have forgotten that they were stranded out here in the desert. They were virtually unarmed, they had no transport, and very little water. The mouth of the cave could be swarming with Sudanese soldiers by now, or rebel militiamen who might take a lot of persuading that these two white Europeans should be allowed to go on their way.

Ben propped the torch at the foot of a statue, took out his phone and used it to photograph everything. Then he set it to video camera mode, walked to the middle of the chamber and filmed a slow, sweeping 360-degree panning shot.

‘What’s that for?’ Kirby asked, looking up from a fistful of artefacts that he’d been gazing at lovingly.

‘Evidence.’ Ben snatched a foot-long, falcon-headed golden deity statuette from an urn and thrust the heavy object in his belt. ‘Now let’s get out of here before this place caves in on us.’

Kirby frowned. ‘But the treasure-’

‘We’re not here to take the treasure,’ Ben said. ‘Just to find it. It’s not ours.’

‘You can’t just let this slip through your fingers,’ Kirby protested. ‘You can’t just walk away from it.’

‘That’s exactly what I’m going to do. Some things are worth more to me.’

‘Like what?’

Another groaning tremor resonated through the rock, then stopped.

‘Do you want to discuss this outside?’ Ben asked. ‘Or under a million tons of rubble?’

‘That’s what I’m saying. At least we can save some of this stuff, if the worst happens.’

‘If the worst happens, it’s someone else’s problem,’ Ben said. ‘I didn’t come here to fill my pockets with trinkets. Now move it.’ He wrapped another strip of cloth around the torch, and saw Kirby’s sullen expression in the dancing flames.

They crawled back out through the hole in the wall and made their way back along the tunnel. The historian was strangely quiet as they crossed the chasm and passed through the teeth of Sobek much faster than on their earlier journey, but Ben paid him little attention. All he cared about now was getting out of the desert and somehow contacting Harry Paxton to tell him the search was over.

Ben moved faster through the sloping tunnel. Behind him, he could hear Kirby’s breath rasping as he fell further and further back in the shaft. At last, Ben found himself climbing the final stretch, towards the mouth of the cave. The air was fresh and cool. Night had fallen during their long exploration of the tunnels, and a pool of moonlight shone through the entrance.

When Kirby caught up with him a minute or two later, Ben took the.38 from his pocket and handed it to him. ‘Take this back. No hard feelings, OK?’ He walked on a few steps.

‘Stop there, Ben,’ Kirby said in a strange voice.

Ben walked on a couple more steps, then stopped and turned slowly.