“No, of course not. Don’t even mention my name. Give me a call when you return.” Ahmed hung up before she could say good-bye.

As Erica boarded the train for Cairo, Lahib Zayed entered the Winter Palace Hotel. He had a confidential message for Erica saying that she would be shown a Seti I statue the following night, provided she followed certain directions. But Erica was not in her room, and he decided he’d return later, afraid of what Muhammad would do to him if he failed to give her the message.

After the train to Cairo departed, Khalifa entered the main post office and cabled Yvon de Margeau that Erica Baron was on her way to Cairo. He added that she’d been acting very strangely and he’d await further instructions at the Savoy Hotel.

Day 8

The grounds of the pyramids of Giza opened at eight A M. With thirty minutes to wait, Erica entered the Mena House Hotel for a second breakfast. A dark-haired hostess showed her to a table on the terrace. Erica ordered coffee and melon. There were only a few other people eating, and the pool was empty of bathers. Directly in front of her, above a line of palms and eucalyptus trees, was the Great Pyramid of Khufu. With an elemental simplicity its triangular form soared upward against the morning sky.

Since Erica had heard about the Great Pyramid since she was a child, she had prepared herself to be a little disappointed when she finally confronted the monument. But such was not the case. She was already moved and awed by its majesty and symmetry. It wasn’t so much the size, although that contributed, as it was the fact that the structure represented an attempt by man to make an imprint on the implacable face of time.

Removing the Baedeker from her bag, Erica found the Great Pyramid and studied the schematic for the interior. She tried to think of Nenephta and how he’d look at the design. She realized that she probably knew something that Nenephta didn’t. Careful investigation had shown that the Great Pyramid, like most of the other pyramids, had undergone significant modification in the course of construction. In fact, it had been hypothesized that the Great Pyramid had passed through three distinct stages. In the first stage, when a much smaller structure was planned, the burial chamber was to be underground, and it had been carved from the bedrock. Then, when the structure was enlarged, a new burial chamber within the building was planned. Erica looked at this room in the diagram. It was erroneously labeled the Queen’s Chamber. Erica knew she could not visit the underground crypt unless she got special permission from the Department of Antiquities. But the Queen’s Chamber was open to the public.

She checked her watch. It was almost eight. Erica wanted to be one of the first to enter the pyramid. Once the busloads of tourists arrived, she knew it would be unpleasant in the narrow passageways.

Turning down persistent offers of donkey and camel rides, Erica walked up the road to the plateau on which the pyramid stood. The closer she got to the structure, the more monumental it became. Although she could quote statistics on the millions of tons of limestone used in building it, such statistics had never moved her. But now that she was within its shadow, she walked as if she were in a trance. Even without its original facing of white limestone, the effect of the sun on the surface of the pyramid was painfully intense.

Erica approached the cave that had been enlarged from the opening Caliph Mamum had ordered dug in A.D. 820. There were no other people in the entryway, and she went in quickly. The glaring whiteness of the day was replaced by dim shadows and weak incandescent light.

The caliph’s tunnel joined the narrow ascending passageway just beyond the granite plugs that had sealed it in antiquity and which were still in place. The ceiling of this ascending corridor was little more than four feet high, and Erica had to bend over to walk up it. In order to facilitate climbing, horizontal ribs had been set in the slippery paving. The passageway was about a hundred feet long, and when Erica emerged at the base of the grand gallery she was relieved to be able to stand upright.

The grand gallery sloped upward at the same ratio as the ascending passage. With its corbeled ceiling over twenty feet high, it was pleasantly spacious after the narrow confines of the corridor. To Erica’s right a grating covered the entrance to the descending shaft, which connected to the underground burial chamber. Ahead of her was the opening she wanted. Erica bent over again and entered the long horizontal corridor leading to the Queen’s Chamber.

Once there, she was again able to stand upright. The air was stuffy, and Erica remembered her uncomfortable feelings in Seti I’s tomb. She closed her eyes and tried to collect her thoughts. The room was without decoration, as were all the interior walls of the pyramid. She took out her flashlight and ran it around the room. The ceiling was vaulted in a chevron formation with huge slabs of limestone.

Erica opened her Baedeker to the schematic of the pyramid. She tried again to imagine what an architect like Nenephta would think if he were within the Great Pyramid, keeping in mind that even in his day the structure was over a thousand years old. From the diagram she knew that standing in the Queen’s Chamber she was directly above the original burial chamber and below the King’s Chamber. It was during the third and final modification of the pyramid that the burial chamber was designed higher in the structure. The new room was labeled King’s Chamber, and Erica decided it was time to visit it.

Bending over to enter the low passage back to the grand gallery, Erica saw that a figure was coming toward her. Passing someone in the narrow corridor would have been difficult, so she waited. With the exit momentarily blocked, she felt a rush of claustrophobia. Suddenly she was aware of the thousands of tons of rock above her. She closed her eyes, breathing deeply. The air was heavy.

“Christ, it’s just an empty room,” complained a blond American tourist. He wore a T-shirt that said “Black holes are out of sight.”

Erica nodded, then started down the tunnel. When she reached the grand gallery, it was already crowded. She climbed to the top behind an obese German man and mounted the wooden steps to get to the level of the King’s Chamber passage. Then she had to duck under a low wall. The grooves for huge sealing portcullises were visible on the sides.

Erica found herself in a pink granite room about fifteen by thirty feet. The ceiling was made from nine slabs laid horizontally. In one corner was a badly damaged sarcophagus. There were about twenty people in the room, and the air was oppressive.

Again Erica tried to imagine how the structure would suggest a way to thwart tomb robbers. She examined the area of the portcullises. Perhaps that was what Nenephta meant: granite closure of the tomb. But portcullises had been used in many of the pyramids. There was nothing unique about those in the Great Pyramid. Besides, they had not been used in the Step Pyramid, and Nenephta said that the way had been used in both.

Although the King’s Chamber was a good-sized room, it was certainly not large enough to store all the funerary possessions of a pharaoh of the importance of Khufu. Erica reasoned that the other chambers had probably been used for the pharaoh’s treasures, particularly the Queen’s Chamber, which was below her, and perhaps even the grand gallery, although many Egyptologists suggested that the grand gallery was constructed to store the sealing blocks for the ascending passage.

Erica had no idea how to explain Nenephta’s comments. As with all its other mysteries, the Great Pyramid remained mute. More and more people pressed into the King’s Chamber. Erica decided she needed some air. She put away her guidebook, but before leaving the chamber she wanted to see the sarcophagus. Gently pushing her way across the room, she peered into the granite box. She knew there was a good deal of controversy about its origin, age, and purpose. It was quite small to accommodate the royal coffin, and a number of Egyptologists doubted that it was a sarcophagus at all.