“This is your first visit to Amarna, and I do not want to throw you in a trench or hide you in a tent for the whole of your four weeks.” Gail’s sigh of relief was noticeable, and he laughed. “Your enthusiasm for this excavation has been apparent from your constant emails and has yet to be matched by any one of my students.”
Gail blushed. She had not been aware of having sent constant emails, but on reflection she had probably become a little too chatty over the past few weeks as her excitement for the upcoming dig grew.
“I was once like you, though not quite as attractive,” he smiled, “a young Sherlock Holmes of the ancient world wanting to find mysteries and solve them.”
He studied the map for several seconds, during which time she wanted to say something but couldn’t find the right words. It seemed to her that Mamdouh was opening up on quite a personal level, possibly a result of the rapport built between them by the constant emailing, possibly as a result of something more sinister.
“And did you?” she finally managed to say, feeling slightly uncomfortable.
“I wanted mysteries too and I got one,” he said. “Amarna found me nearly thirty years ago, and I have been obsessed ever since.” He was looking deep into the map, beyond the writing and the marks, toward something else.
Gail waited almost a minute before breaking the awkward silence that followed. “So how can I help?” she said quietly.
Her voice pulled him back to the present and he jerked his head up and away from the map with a smile. “I would like you to spend the next couple of days getting to know Amarna, the sands, the cliffs, the ruins. There are two reasons for me giving you this task. Firstly, I know that Nefertiti is here somewhere, but I have looked for so long I am blinded by experience. I need fresh, excited, idealistic eyes, and I trust David when he tells me that you’re the person for that.
“I would recommend that you head to these plateaus to the north. From there you will get a great panoramic view of the valley, and it’s a good place to start before heading to the tombs to the east.” He folded the map up and passed it to her, along with the keys to a Land Rover. “There is a 4x4 outside, which I prepared this morning with everything you will need. And after two days, there will still be plenty left to do here, such as cataloguing finds,” he said with a wink and a grin.
Gail took the keys and the map. “Shoocran,” she said.
“You’re getting better!” he grinned. “Shukran,” he corrected, shortening the u and rolling the r.
She couldn’t quite believe her luck: four months ago she was floundering, without even a research proposal or any idea of where to find one. Now, she was in Egypt with the keys to a 4x4 and an open road to discovery.
“What’s the second reason?” she asked.
He laughed. “Ben will be coming with you for safety. Not yours, but archaeology’s. I need to get him offsite for a while: he’s a complete liability with these fragile tablets in the trench!”
Half an hour later Ben started the engine of the Land Rover and pushed it into first gear, moving slowly forwards in the sand, he turned towards the main track and found second with a screech of the clutch. Gail poked her head out of the passenger window and grimaced at the Professor, who laughed silently and waved goodbye.
As they accelerated into the distance, he stopped waving and removed his hat. He pulled a mobile phone from his trouser pocket and hit the call button twice.
A telephone on the other side of the world began to ring.
Chapter 8
“My God, it’s hot!” Gail exclaimed as she scanned the rocks ahead for a foothold. Seeing a suitably flat one, she shot her foot forwards and hopped on to it, holding her arms out to maintain balance. “And it’s only eleven!”
“The sun, it is heating the rocks. The rocks are,” Ben paused thoughtfully for a second before continuing. “Cooking us?” He glanced at Gail and she looked up at him and smiled.
“The rocks are absorbing the heat,” she corrected, although she wasn’t entirely sure herself whether absorbed was the correct term for it either. Kneeling down, she touched the surface beneath her feet and pulled her hand away quickly. “Ouch!” she said, standing up again.
Ben mentally repeated the word absorbing to himself several times, before shrugging and jumping across a deep hole onto another rock. “There is nothing up here,” he shouted back as he reached a ledge in the cliff face. “This is just a cliff.”
Gail reached his side and looked around them. The cliff rose at least another twelve feet above them, while the ledge they were standing on jutted two feet out at its base. They had just crossed at least ten yards of tightly-packed rocks of varying sizes. She knew nothing about geology, but guessed that they had, until sometime in the past, been part of the cliff. “You’re right,” she conceded eventually.
“Unless you like rocks?” Ben had intended this to be a joke, but it had clearly not translated well.
She didn’t particularly like rocks. But something had drawn her to this specific cliff, and now she was determined to get to the top of it and look back out over the ancient city of Akhetaten.
“How do we get up there?” she asked, pointing to the top.
“By helicopter?” Ben suggested. This time he was rewarded with a short laugh from Gail, which boosted his confidence. “Or we can use the lift?”
“Don’t be silly, we’ll take the escalator.” She looked at him and laughed. “Stairs that move, Ben, stairs that move.”
“Ah! Escalator!” he said, accentuating the first syllable to suggest that he knew the word but she had pronounced it incorrectly. They both laughed as they made their way along the ledge.
Farid ‘Ben’ Limam was not the worst archaeologist in Egypt, but he wasn’t far off. It was his last year at university, and the Amarna dig was earning him valuable credits towards his bachelor’s degree, so he wasn’t so upset that Mamdouh had seen fit to get him out of the way just as the exciting finds had started to emerge.
Truth be told, he was actually enjoying himself, climbing over rocks looking for something that wasn’t there.
And in any case, he thought as he looked up at Gail, who had shot ahead and was nearing the top already, the view was pretty good. He looked down again and cursed himself. He had immediately clicked with George the previous evening, and felt bad for staring at Gail’s rear. He looked up again just in time to see her legs disappearing over the top. Ben stopped climbing and looked down. It wasn’t as steep as he had imagined, but it was higher. He had already climbed a good twenty feet up from the Land Rover and had another ten feet to go before he joined her.
Hearing Gail’s voice from beyond the cliff-top, he shouted up at her. There was no response. Again, he heard her voice and hurried to reach the top. He was just about to clamber over and reveal himself when he heard her again, but this time much clearer.
“No, not yet, just climbing around some cliffs with Ben,” she said. There was a short pause before she laughed and added: “No, of course not! He’s helping me. The Professor sent me away for two days to search the desert for Nefertiti! Can you believe that?”
George, Ben thought. As he realised this was a personal call, he crouched down just below the cliff top and decided to wait; he didn’t want to disturb Gail while she was talking to her husband.
“When do you arrive? So you’ll have lunch there then?”
At this point it occurred to Ben that he was in actual fact eavesdropping, which was far worse than interrupting a private conversation. Debating what to do, he pulled out his own phone and opened the directory. He contemplated calling his father, to avoid the awkward situation of him standing there waiting while Gail struggled to say her goodbyes. But then he shook his head, realising that should his conversation take longer than Gail’s, she would be in the same situation. Suddenly he thought of the solution.