“That’s not why I am here,” Kamal brushed the matter aside with the back of his left hand and put his right hand inside his pocket. Fishing out a packet of cigarettes he lit one and offered the pack around.
George thought to mention that the hotel, unlike most of Cairo, was non-smoking. He managed to bite his lip instead.
Kamal put the pack of cigarettes back in his pocket and looked around for an ashtray. Ben saw an empty glass beside the bed, but didn’t move to pick it up. Following his eyes, Kamal reached for the glass and tapped his cigarette into it anxiously.
“Why are you here then, Captain?” George asked.
Kamal flicked his eyes between the two men before taking a deep drag. “Because I have something very important to tell you, Mr Turner.” As he spoke he exhaled, and the thick, pungent smoke filled the room. “Alone,” he stared up at Ben.
Ben was about to protest; the last thing he wanted was to leave his friend with this corrupt, possibly dangerous man. But George raised his hand to stop him.
He hesitated, trying to remember the name Ben had made up for himself. Abdul? He decided to play it safe. “It doesn’t matter if he leaves or not, whatever you tell me, I’ll tell him anyway.”
Kamal seemed to weigh the options up for a moment, and then shrugged impassively.
“Those aren’t your wife’s ashes,” he said bluntly, nodding towards the urn standing on a desk behind Ben.
George jumped and took a step towards the policeman. “What do you mean they’re not Gail’s ashes? Where are Gail’s ashes?”
“There aren’t any. There are no ashes of your wife.”
“But I was at the cremation! I was given the urn containing her ashes! How can you dare come here and tell me that this isn’t my wife?” George was within a couple of feet of where Kamal was sitting, and the policeman instinctively leant back to defend himself.
“I’m sorry Mr Turner, I really am, but it’s true.” There was genuine remorse in his voice, and George eased his stance briefly.
“So why are there no ashes of my wife? Who screwed up? The crematorium? You?”
Kamal looked into George’s eyes. “There are no ashes of your wife, Mr Turner, because as far as I know she isn’t dead.”
Chapter 53
“I’m sorry, Dr Turner, I understand why you would be upset with the way you have been treated,” Seth Mallus said. Before she had a chance to respond, he continued. “Dr Patterson has been tasked with making you feel as welcome and as comfortable as possible during your stay.”
“Let me speak to my husband,” she demanded.
“In due course.”
“No!” she shouted, slamming her hand on his desk. “How dare you treat me this way? You abducted me, you murdered a peaceful man, and now I demand to be set free.”
He hesitated slightly. “Dr Turner, imagine that what you say is true. Imagine that I did murder a man, and that I did abduct you. That being the case, what sort of position do you think you are in where you can suddenly make demands of me, and expect to get your way?”
“I –” she began, but didn’t know how to finish.
“Good. Now I would like to spend the next few days gently easing you into your new role, which by the way is of assistant to Dr Henry Patterson, whom you have already met.”
“Assistant in what?” she demanded.
Mallus looked at her impatiently. “As I said; I would ease you in to your role slowly, but unfortunately we simply don’t have time. And to be perfectly honest after so many years waiting for Dr Patterson to do this on his own before he asked for help, I don’t have the patience either.”
Gail looked at Patterson, who looked away uneasily.
“So I’ll be quite frank, give you the briefest of briefs, and then it’s up to you to decide if you wish to cooperate or not.” He leaned forwards and raised an eyebrow. “You may have guessed this already, but not cooperating is something I have contingency plans for. Now, I don’t like being interrupted, which is something you seem to be in constant threat of doing, so this is your opportunity. Speak.”
She stared at him for a moment. He hadn’t really given her much of a choice, she conceded. “No,” she said bluntly. “You speak.”
He smiled, as if her attitude was something he’d been expecting. Feisty, he thought.
“We need your assistance, and we need you to be able to concentrate fully on what we are doing here. What I am about to disclose is knowledge shared by only a handful of people, all of them within this facility. Its implications are so huge that it cannot be made public. The societal impact of this would be catastrophic.” He gestured for Gail and Patterson to be seated.
Her temper simmering, Gail didn’t question him, but simply sat down and waited for him to continue. “Some time ago, a discovery was made at an archaeological dig in Amarna, in Egypt. You know it well, Dr Turner, as you made that discovery. By now, I believe you know that the book you focused your attention on was not the only important book in the Amarna Library. Indeed, another book was brought to this facility under a shroud of secrecy.” With this he tapped the surface of his desk and the wall lit up behind him with a very high resolution photograph.
Gail instantly knew what she was looking at: the man holding a staff aloft, embossed on the wooden cover of an ancient book. She couldn’t help being taken aback; having it described second-hand by Professor al-Misri was no substitute for the real thing, or at the very least a picture of the real thing.
“Dr Turner, you devoted your career to studying the Book of Aniquilus, what you call the Stickman Book. What you see behind me is the –”
“Book of Xynutians,” she interrupted him.
For the briefest of moments, Mallus faltered. He glanced across at Patterson, who looked back, equally as confused. “Indeed, the Xynutians. But how did you know? None of your work indicates that you knew this.”
Gail pulled her eyes away from the picture on the wall and looked at the man behind his desk. I’ve thrown him she thought triumphantly. But how could her dream have told her such a thing? It took her little time to work out the most likely answer, that when she had been unconscious someone, probably Patterson, must have mentioned the name. Her subconscious mind, still somehow aware of the world around her, incorporated the detail into a vivid dream that was a mishmash of fragments of memory. But she wasn’t going to reveal such logic to the man sitting in front of her. “I just knew; I must have read it somewhere. I’ve never seen it before, but it’s been described to me by Professor al-Misri.”
“It doesn’t really matter how you know,” he said dismissively. “But you are correct. The Book of Aniquilus and the Book of Xynutians: two books sealed in the Amarna Library deep underground thousands of years ago. You have studied the former intimately for years, but have never seen the latter. You will shortly get that opportunity, but first I have to fill in some gaps for you, to help you understand how important this is.
“We knew that the books were hidden at Amarna before Professor al-Misri started his dig. In fact, I had been closely monitoring all archaeological excavations in the area before your dig even started. But knowing there are ancient texts hidden in Egypt is like knowing water is wet. Our knowledge was a little more informed: we knew of the existence of the books of Aniquilus and Xynutians, as when they were entombed thousands of years ago, the architect who designed the Library was free to go his own way. At the time, Egypt was in the middle of a short-lived religious revolution. The time of Akhetaten was almost over, and the capital was abandoned within a decade.”
“Spare me the history lesson,” Gail sneered.
“Indeed, I’m sure you know all this better than I. Nevertheless, please indulge me a little more. Soon, Akhenaten passed away, followed by Nefertiti. The capital was a ghost town, and looting was rife. As you know some of the most prolific looters in ancient Egypt were probably the workers themselves. The very people who created the supposedly hidden and impenetrable tombs knew exactly where they were, and precisely how to get in.