The Foundation Vault

By Lee F Herrick

When Larry Yapici, permanent student at Berkeley in San Francisco, sets off for Istanbul to claim an unexpected inheritance, he has no idea that his first overseas trip will take such an unexpected and dangerous turn. Within a few days he and his cousin Nedim from Germany, are swept up in an adventure that is to take them to some of the most far-flung, inhospitable places on earth.
It also soon becomes clear that there are a number of parties with more than a passing interest in their questa quest that sets Larry and Nedim on a path of discovery that challenges them to question everything they had previously learnt about the history of mankind.
Whether they will survive these challenges is another matter.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: Jan 14, 2015
• ISBN: 9781504935913

Lee F Herrick

Lee F. Herrick was born in Australia. After completing school, he ventured out to the nearest Pacific neighbor, New Zealand, where his interest in the natural world led to studies in geology and botany at Auckland University. He has since split his time between Europe and New Zealand, finally settling in England. Lee has spent thirty years working in music, theatre, and film. He now lives in London with his wife and two youngest children.

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© 2015 Lee F Herrick. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse  09/14/2015

ISBN: 978-1-5049-3590-6 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5049-3591-3 (e)

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

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CONTENTS

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

CHAPTER ONE

Teotihuacán, Mexico – September 2012

T HE SHADOWS EDGED SLOWLY ACROSS the Avenue of the Dead from west to east. A tentative breeze kicked up a little dust across the barren ground of the Plaza de la Luna as the rising sun touched the very top of the Pyramid of the Moon, edging downwards, lighting the steps of the eastern side, warming the grey s tone.

Close to the top of the pyramid on one of the stone steps high up on the south-east corner, something moved. A minute tilt of the head, and the outline of a grey figure detached itself from the stone. The figure was suddenly bathed in sunlight. It was a woman in her early forties—severe, short dark hair; brown eyes behind black-rimmed glasses; and dressed in practical khaki trousers and shirt. She sat cross-legged, looking comfortable and relaxed. A small khaki backpack lay on the step beside her.

Professor Adella Constantin slowly opened her eyes, a smile playing across her angular features as she took a deep breath, held it, and exhaled slowly, her thin shoulders dropping into a relaxed pose. She tilted her head to the left, then to the right, gazing out into the distance, straight down the Avenue of the Dead to the massive Pyramid of the Sun almost a kilometre away. She remained still for some time before reaching out, picking up her backpack, and standing in one graceful movement. She threw the backpack across her shoulder and began making her way along the step towards the centre of the south face of the pyramid.

Adella had often wandered around the pyramids and buildings in the ancient city of Teotihuacán. Of all the sites she had visited over the years at University of California, Berkeley, first as a student and then as a member of the faculty, Teotihuacán fascinated her most. She negotiated the central stairway on the south face of the pyramid, the sun rising fast to her left, and was already very warm when she reached ground level and began to cross the Plaza de la Luna. She walked diagonally across the square to the south-east corner and passed between two smaller pyramids. A simple dirt track across open ground led from here towards one of the car parks.

Adella had parked the hire car in the corner of the car park an hour earlier, before sunrise, her favourite time of the day when visiting Teotihuacán. The place was usually deserted at that time, the market sellers arriving between seven and seven thirty in the morning, hoping to catch the early, more enthusiastic tourists. Watching the sunrise over the site, Adella could almost see the Maya wandering the streets and squares of Teotihuacán.

*

‘So was it worth it? Did I miss anything?’

‘Of course you did,’ Adella answered.

‘Well, I am supposed to be on holiday!’

‘I didn’t say anything! If you want to sleep your life away …’

Adella’s daughter, Caroline, yawned and climbed out of the back seat of the car where she had stayed, wrapped in a blanket, for a little more sleep after the short drive from the hotel. Dressed in jeans and an oversized T-shirt, she pulled on a jacket against the last of the chill night air. With long, dark, unbrushed hair falling in disarray about her shoulders, she seemed the antithesis of her well-ordered mother.

‘Although,’ Caroline continued, ‘I should know by now what a holiday with you means.’

The water on the portable gas burner Adella had set up under a scrawny tree by the car was coming to the boil, and she was adding coffee directly into the pot by the teaspoon.

‘A holiday should—’

‘Always have an educational element. Heard it all before, Mom.’ Caroline sat down on the dry grass by the gas burner.

Adella went over to the open door of the car and reached into a cardboard box on the floor of the back seat. She came back with a small frying pan, a loaf of bread, and half a dozen eggs.

‘But come on, Mom. You’ve been wandering around here for the last twenty years, haven’t you? Surely, you’ve seen everything by now. Don’t you want to go someplace else? I mean even to study? It’s so boring.’

‘Yes, I know you’re bored,’ said Adella, trying not to get annoyed. ‘But it won’t kill you to have a day here before we go on to the beach. It is on the way, after all.’ Adella stirred the coffee in the pot gently, then picked up the pot and tapped it on a stone a few times to settle the grounds.

‘The thing is’, she continued, trying to soften her voice again, ‘there are things here that no one can explain at all. Things … well … that really begin to interest me.’

‘I know, Mom. You’re always going on about it, but no one else seems interested, so surely it can’t be all that important.’

‘Well, it may be that the norm is simply to ignore things we don’t understand. When I first came here more than twenty years ago, I did just that—tried to fit what was in front of me to my own theories.’ She carefully poured coffee into two mugs Caroline had set out on the ground. ‘Now I see that if I don’t understand how a piece of writing or carving fits, then it’s something exciting. Unfortunately, so much has been destroyed in the last few hundred years that soon it’ll all be gone.’

‘Come on, Mom. Who’s gonna to take that away?’ She waved her hand in the general direction of the Pyramid of the Sun in the distance to the west, now in the bright sunlight. Standing 233.5 feet in height with a perimeter of 2932.8 feet, it was made up of two and a half million tonnes of stone and earth.

Adella set the frying pan onto the gas flame.

‘No, getting rid of that won’t be easy,’ she said with a smile. ‘Even the idiot Mexican government a hundred years ago couldn’t completely dismantle it, although they tried hard enough.’ She handed Caroline a cup of coffee and picked up her bag. She took a small A5 size notebook from the bag and passed it across to Caroline. ‘This is the problem.’

Caroline opened the notebook at random. Notes in small, tidy handwriting covered each page. Pencil drawings and photos were scattered across the pages. After flicking through a few pages, Caroline looked up at her mother. ‘And?’

‘All the written material. All the carvings. All the scrolls. All the sculpture. That’s what we’re losing.’ She cracked an egg into the frying pan, placed the shell carefully back into the egg carton, and picked up another. ‘Did you know that when the Spanish invaded Peru in the middle of the sixteenth century, they destroyed pretty well everything? They burnt close to twenty thousand scrolls of written material. We don’t even know what was written on those scrolls. The Spanish killed most of the people they could find and burnt anything these people had written, carved, or painted!’

Caroline closed the notebook. ‘No need to get angry, Mom … any more coffee?’

Adella picked up the coffee pot. ‘No, I guess not. I suppose it’s kind of late for that’ she said, turning to Caroline with what she hoped was an encouraging smile. ‘So … feeling fit? I thought we could take a walk before it gets too hot.’

‘Depends what you mean by a walk. I’ve been on your walks before. Why are we down here again, anyway? Surely you’ve covered every bit of ground in the place by now.’

‘Yes, I suppose I have.’ Adella was buttering a few slices of bread. She threw them onto two plates which were sitting on the ground. I thought that we could look around a little more. That’s all.’

‘So what are we looking for?’

‘Don’t know,’ she said, passing over one of the plates.

‘Nothing new then,’ mumbled Caroline ungraciously.

*

Istanbul, Turkey

Larry Yates was very cold. The rain had stopped an hour or so earlier, but the dirty cobbles were still wet as he hurried along the streets of the Sultanahmet, the old quarter of Istanbul, towards the sea. As he went further south, away from Kucuk Ayasofya Cd and the area around the famous Blue Mosque, the crowds had thinned. Now there were only a few people walking the alleys and back streets in the fading light.

He didn’t know what to do next. He was sure he was being followed but had no idea why or by whom. He was approaching an old brickwork railway over bridge. There were a number of poorly lit tunnels allowing pedestrians access to the dilapidated warehouse area on the other side by the sea. He was careful to keep to an even pace as he turned the corner into the tunnel, but as soon as he was sure he was out of sight, he took off down the tunnel at a sprint. He burst out on the other side, desperately searching left and right for somewhere to hide. On the left, there was another opening. With no time to think, he made for the narrow alley and flattened himself against the wall to see if he could get a look at anyone following.

After a moment, as he tried to calm his breathing, he heard urgent whispering in what he presumed to be Turkish echoing down the tunnel. He edged back along the wall, moving deeper into the shadows of the narrow alley, carefully picking his way through the rubbish outside the back door of some sort of factory. After about twenty metres, it opened onto another alleyway running left and right. He assumed that the sea lay to the right, so he set off in that direction in search of somewhere better to hide.

Sometime later, Larry decided he had to take a chance and make a move so he could at least return circulation to his feet. He had been squatting down behind a pile of pallets and hadn’t seen or heard anything out of the ordinary for fifteen minutes—a scrawny cat sidling along in the shelter of a stone wall, cars passing in the distance on the flyover at the end of the street. Nothing much else. He was cold and tired, and his patience was running out fast.

He stood slowly. He had a better view up and down the dingy alleyway now. Nothing was moving at all. He carefully stepped out from behind the pallets, keeping close to the walls of the warehouses as he moved back towards Oyuncu Çk, which was more open and had more light. Once there, he began to wind his way left and right in a westerly direction. The house lay in the narrow stretch of land between the railway line and Kennedy Cd, the dual carriageway that ran along the seashore to the south.

He turned a corner and froze. Holding his breath, he quietly moved back into the shadows. About thirty metres away, at the end of the street, two men were talking animatedly. He felt the brick wall with his left hand and once again ducked into safety, then carefully looked back around the corner. One of the men was coming his way at a trot. This was getting ridiculous. Who were they, and what could they possibly want? He waited until he heard running footsteps approaching. Then, when he determined that the person had almost reached him, he stepped out.

Larry wasn’t a particularly big man, and neither was he particularly brave. He was therefore pleased to see that the man running towards him was quite small and thin and carried no weapon. Larry simply put both arms straight out and hit the man dead centre in his chest, knocking him off his feet.

‘What do you want?’ Larry screamed, standing over the cowering man.

The man was crawling backwards as fast as possible, trying to get up as he did so.

‘Why are you following me? What do you want?’

The man managed to get to his feet and, without a word, took off in the opposite direction like a frightened rabbit.

Larry didn’t move, surprised at his own success. ‘Hey … not bad, dude!’ he said aloud, congratulating himself.

He watched the man scurry around the corner, and then he set off towards the house. It was at the end of a narrow road called Kapiagasi Hisan Sk, or Kapiagasi Castle Road, a rather salubrious-sounding name for the dirty, rough, dead-end track that it actually was. He turned into the street and walked quickly past an empty lot until he came to an untidy, broken-down brick wall. He clambered over the wall into an unkempt open area of gravel and low scrub in front of a derelict house with half the roof missing. He climbed the broken steps onto the veranda and turned to survey the patch of gravel in front of the house in the failing light, looking out over the weeds and scattered rubbish past an upturned rusty pram and on over the road to the fantastically blue Sea of Marmara in the distance.

‘Welcome to Chez Larry. Cool!’

*

Three months earlier, back in San Francisco, when Larry’s mother phoned and asked him to drop by because she had some important news, he presumed it was the usual thing. One of his cousins or one of his mother’s friends children had passed another exam, got another promotion, or got engaged to be married—none of which Larry had any prospect of doing in the near—or distant—future, the way he was going.

Larry’s grandfather on his mother’s side had left Turkey in the sixties with a wife and three children. Initially, he had been able to gain guest worker status in Germany and had worked hard and done well over a period of nine or ten years. Through a family connection, he had managed to make the move to America, taking only his wife and the youngest of the children, Larry’s mother. The older sons had also worked hard and, at seventeen and nineteen, they were already very independent. They fought to stay on in Germany with their extended Turkish family. To leave them was a very difficult decision for the father. His sons would be of great use building a life in a new country. He could see, however, that they had put a lot into building their own lives in their adopted country and so deserved their independence. With a poignant mixture of sadness and pride in his two boys, he had sailed away with his wife and their youngest daughter.

Once in America, with the help of the cousin who had assisted in the passage to their new home, Larry’s grandfather had begun trading under the family name. The Yapici Corner Store did very well. Before too long, they had built up a string of outlets supplying Turkish goods to the immigrants of California. Larry was one of the bourgeoning Yapici generation who, by the time they reached their twenties, were reaping the benefit of their forefathers’ hard graft. He was, however, one of the few who had not inherited the Yapici grandparents’ commercial work ethic. At twenty-six years old, he was still at university studying history and politics and did not exactly feel pressured to finish his studies and get out into the world.

Larry had the house key poised at his mother’s front door when it suddenly opened. He wasn’t in the least bit surprised. He knew that even if his mother was in the kitchen in the back of the house, somehow she knew exactly what was going on in the street out front.

‘Hi, Mom.’

‘Ilhami, my son! Come here.’

She took him in her arms. Larry’s mother never accepted his choice of American first name. The grandchildren were all given Turkish names, but they all, without exception, chose to anglicize the names as soon as they could. Unbeknownst to his mother, Larry was known as Larry Yates to the student community at Berkeley.

‘Oh, you are not looking good though—not eating, I see. Come inside and let me have a proper look at you. And then I will tell you the news. You will like the news, my son. I know you will. It is from the old country.’

Although Larry’s mother had been only three years old when she left Turkey and twelve when she came to America, as she grew older, a Turkish accent of sorts was creeping back into her speech. Her parents had been quick to see the advantages of America, but it had been very important for them that Larry’s mother never forgot her Turkish roots. After her parents had passed away, she felt it important to instil in their grandson Larry as much as she knew about her home country.

‘It is news from your family in Istanbul, my poor brother, who passed away only last year in Turkey’—she paused for effect and blew her nose as tears welled up in her eyes— ‘and whom we miss so much, may peace and blessings of Allah be upon him. He had no children of his own. Of course, he was to be married once, many, many years ago, but we know that there was a problem with her family … they were German, you see. Of course, we all prayed that Allah would guide him, but your Uncle Abdul went ahead against all our wishes and married. But of course Allah has his ways, which we may not always understand.’ She bowed her head in reverence. ‘No children blessed the marriage. Well, of course, she was not pure; what else could the rest of the family do? We had to … take matters into our own hands.

‘Naturally, he was worried after she was gone, but we helped him through that difficult time. And she lived well, we think—well with the money we paid; I’m sure she was happy. You remember, Ilhami, when I went to Turkey for some time. You were very young, of course. I left you with—’

‘Mother. I need a coffee.’ Larry was worried that he was in for the whole story yet again, and they hadn’t got further than the front hallway!

‘Yes, yes, of course, coffee for my boy.’ They went through to the kitchen, and Larry went straight to the fridge.

‘Yes, my son, have some sekerpare. I baked them only this morning. I will make some coffee for you.’ Larry took out a plate of small round cakes, each with a whole almond set in the top.

‘Now sit down and eat.’

Of course, Larry needed no encouragement; this was all he ever did at his mother’s house. Although he had been brought up in California and knew from his university friends of a more independent lifestyle, he had never seen any reason to embrace this lifestyle himself. It seemed logical and natural that he should eat often at his mother’s house, in particular while his clothes were being washed and folded with loving care.

‘Anyway, as I was saying’—she turned to him importantly—‘you, my son’—she took a deep breath—‘my firstborn … you … have inherited.’ She stood at the oven, smiling broadly at him.

Larry stopped chewing, a half-eaten sekerpare in his hand.

‘Inherited … inherited?’ He put the cake down, mouth open. ‘What have I inherited, Mother?’

*

Teotihuacán, Mexico

A half an hour after breakfast, Adella and Caroline were walking down the Avenue of the Dead with the Pyramid of the Moon behind them. It was about eight thirty in the morning, the sun already well over the horizon in a clear blue sky. There were a number of sellers set up along the avenue, and a few tourists were already browsing around the souvenir shop as Adella and Caroline wandered past. Opposite the main entrance, they turned to the left and entered La Cuidadela, the Citadel area, with the Temple of Quetzalcoatl ahead of them.

Adella had been quiet for some time, her attention elsewhere.

‘No, really, the university is fine,’ said Caroline. ‘And staying at the halls of residence is nothing new for me. Living alone, I mean. I’m left to myself quite a lot, but when I need a bit of help, the tutors are there and I have a few good friends.’

Adella realized that Caroline was waiting for a comment or at least some acknowledgment that she was listening. ‘What … who … sorry.’

‘Amanda, one of my friends—she’s really helpful. Well, of course it’s not the same as living at home …’ Caroline looked off into the distance but was well aware her mother was now watching her closely. Whenever she was with Adella, she couldn’t help bringing her lonely and difficult life into the discussion somewhere. Brought up more by her grandmother than anyone with her mother very rarely around, Caroline always felt she deserved some sort of explanation from her.

If the truth be known, Adella felt the same way, but she hadn’t got around to it yet, although the thought had crossed her mind that this trip might afford some opportunity to get closer to her daughter. When it came down to it though, Adella really had no idea where to start. She had fallen pregnant at twenty-four while a postgraduate student at Berkeley working on a master’s degree in archaeology. This much Caroline knew; after all, she could do the maths. But when pushing for information about her unknown father, Caroline found very little forthcoming. ‘It was a very short thing … he was a bit older and I was … very stupid. If it wasn’t for your grandmother, I couldn’t have coped, really. She was amazing, and she looked after you so well, gave you a real home. She loves you very much, you know.’

This was as far as Caroline could ever get by way of explanation. When she pushed for a reason her mother had taken such a small role in her upbringing, Caroline got no further. She so wanted to spend time with Adella, but her mother frustrated and, at times, angered her. ‘I was very busy’ may have done for a while, but it was not that great a reason to give to a tetchy nineteen-year-old demanding answers.

Adella kicked a stone and watched it skid away along the dusty path. ‘Well, that’s good then, isn’t it?’ Once again, she felt her inadequacy when facing her daughter. ‘That you have such good friends, I mean.’ She stopped and pointed at a huge courtyard and the platform surrounding it in front of them, relieved that they had reached the Citadel—something to hide in.

‘Let’s climb up there. We can walk right around on the wall to get a better view.’

They climbed the steps onto the platform surrounding the Citadel, Adella quick to retreat to the familiar ground of ancient shadows, Caroline saddened by the familiar outcome. From here, there was a view over the courtyard in front of the Temple of Quetzalcoatl. Stone serpent heads protruded from the façade of the temple, where in ancient times up to thirty thousand people would come to witness ceremonies and sacrifices.

They wandered slowly along the platform in silence, the sun already very hot on their backs. They could see the tourists arriving by the busload at the car parking area by the main gate. The Mexican sellers were busy with their postcards, maps, and ‘authentic’ obsidian knives and alabaster gods.

Caroline stopped when she realized that Adella wasn’t with her anymore. She turned to see her at the southern corner of the enclosure looking out over the barren ground to the south-east. Caroline followed her mother’s gaze but couldn’t see anything much other than a few isolated, sorry-looking jacaranda trees.

She walked back and stood beside Adella.

‘And what are we looking at, then?’ she asked. ‘What are we looking for?’

Adella scanned the area immediately to the south-east for a moment longer and then turned to her daughter. ‘Don’t know yet. Just a thought, really. Come on.’

She set off, walking northward along the platform past the Temple of the Feathered Serpent but looking in the opposite direction, out across the open fields.

*

‘So what’s this all about then?’ asked Caroline. They were seated in the cafeteria with much-needed glasses of iced water as they scanned the menu for lunch. ‘I know I haven’t been that interested when you’ve taken me on these trips before, but even I noticed that you usually look at the pile of rocks in front of you rather than staring out into the car park!’ She had let the moment go out in the field, not quite knowing how to open the subject of her upbringing again. She had drifted off and, despite herself, relaxed in the clear morning heat, enjoying the fact that she had nothing really she needed to think about right now, particularly university work, following her mother aimlessly across the fields around the Avenue of the Dead.

Adella smiled. ‘It’s nothing much really. We can move on tonight if you like and spend a bit of time at the beach or something. We can go across to Veracruz.’ She paused, turning the menu over before continuing. ‘For a long time, people have been playing with the orientation of the pyramids in Egypt—in relation to the stars, that is—and I just wanted to check a few things out around here as well. I’ve always thought that even though the pyramids in Egypt look quite different to these … well, maybe there is a connection somewhere.’

‘But even I know that they are much older in Egypt—like thousands of years older, aren’t they? And they are a bit of a way away!’

Adella took a sip of water. ‘Uh huh.’ She nodded in agreement. ‘Some of the Egyptian pyramids are thought to have been started sometime around 3500 years BC, but the Pyramid of the Moon here was begun around 100 BC. A completely different time in our history, but why were they built?’

‘I thought they were just tombs or something.’

‘Well, yes, that’s generally thought to be so, but was it the only reason for building them—any of them? Why did these people spend so much time and energy building these things? Egyptian or Maya?

*

Cairo, Egypt

Sienna Richards was taking tea in Cairo. She adored this part of the job. She never really had got used to it but loved pretending she had. For many years, she had worked in England and northern Europe, but the Travelodge in Manchester or the NH Berlin definitely couldn’t compare with this. The exquisite white marble, the golden chandeliers, and the rich colours of the huge oil paintings on the walls of the coffee room at the Four Seasons Hotel Cairo really impressed Sienna. She settled back into the grand armchair as the waiter set the tea things out on the beautiful gilded table in front of her.

‘Will that be all, Miss Richards?’

‘Ah … thank you. I am expecting a Doctor Mitchell. When he arrives, could you bring him to me here, please.’

‘Of course, Miss Richards.’

The waiter crossed the wide expanse of polished marble floor to tend to another table. There were a number of guests relaxing in the cool of the coffee room, taking shelter for an hour or two from the hot, dusty, bustling streets of Cairo in early September. The gentle murmur of their conversations added to the civilized grandeur of the room.

Sienna poured the tea, enjoying the feel of the finely balanced teapot and the bell-like sound of the teaspoon on the cup as she stirred.

‘Miss Richards?’ Sienna looked up. Standing before her, hat in hand, was a man in his late forties or early fifties. He was tall and slim, with the physique of a man fifteen years his junior. He had dark hair and piercing blue eyes. ‘Callum Mitchell,’ he said, bowing slightly.

‘Yes … hello, Doctor Mitchell.’ Sienna made to stand, but Mitchell waved her down as he moved to take a seat on the long couch on the other side of the table. On the wall above the couch was a huge oil painting of the Nile at sunset. ‘Very nice to meet you, and thank you so much for coming.’ She held out her hand.

‘It’s a pleasure, Miss Richards, and please call me Cal.’ He took her hand gently, looking directly into her eyes with a disarming smile.

‘Would you like some tea … Cal? And please, I’m Sienna."

‘Actually, I would prefer coffee if that’s possible.’ Without waiting for an answer, he caught the eye of the waiter and ordered coffee. ‘So, Sienna, I understand you’re here in Egypt researching a television documentary. Your communiqué seemed to imply that you would like some input from me.’

‘Yes, that’s correct. We are producing a documentary—oh, sorry, we are Woodrowe Films, an independent production house based in London, and we were hoping you might be able to help us both on-camera, maybe with some interviews about your work, and behind camera as a consultant. We are very interested in the theories concerning the position of the pyramids in relation to the stars.’

The waiter arrived with Callum’s coffee. He set it down on the table and turned to Sienna. ‘More tea, Madam?’

Sienna leant forward in her chair and placed the teacup down on the table. ‘Thank you,’ she said and then continued. ‘I understand that you have expressed some interest in these theories yourself.’ She looked at Callum, who took his time to answer, first sipping his coffee.

‘Well, I suppose all of us in the field love a good story.’ He smiled at Sienna. ‘When Robert Bauval first proposed the Orion Correlation Theory, it was thought of as … interesting. Remember that Bauval is not a professional, so many of my more academic colleagues took it upon themselves to publicly ridicule his work. Perhaps because, at least where some of them are concerned, if he is right, their own work would be compromised. This, of course, is nothing new in the world of science.’

He leant forward and turned towards Sienna. ‘The idea that the pyramids were built with an eye to the stars is, of course, nothing new. It is known that the ancient Egyptians had a preoccupation with and a surprising understanding of the stars. I am sure, Sienna, you are aware of their beliefs that the path to heaven is revealed to us by the stars.’

‘Yes—well, I understand that there have been a number of other books written on the subject. I mean, Bauval is not alone in this, is he?’

Callum smiled. ‘Ah! So this is where you are going then. We are descended from the aliens who built all these great monuments and such like.’ He picked up his coffee and settled back into the sofa.

‘Well, we may have to include some of this material. We’re trying to present a reasonable, in-depth look at all theories. We do have the BBC on board, and—"

‘All popular theories! Mm … I see. Tell me, Sienna, where do you and your people see my role in this film of yours? Surely you should be speaking to people like Bauval, Herschel, Von Denikan, and … Indiana Jones, perhaps?’ He looked at her over the edge of his cup. Sienna smiled—a smile not lost on Callum. ‘After all,’ he continued, ‘I’m not really part of this wave of new age writers. I’m a simple man working in the more traditional areas of archaeology, as I’m sure you know after your research.’

‘Well, some would disagree, Doctor Mitchell. In fact, some would see you as a real-life Indiana.’

A phone rang. Callum took a cell phone from his jacket pocket, glancing at it quickly and then back to her. ‘But obviously you don’t see me as anything like as successful. After all, Hollywood’s not exactly come knocking to offer me work, has it, Sienna?’ He smiled. ‘Would you excuse me for a moment? I really should take this call.’ He stood up and walked a little distance away.

Sienna watched him closely. After a short time, during which he listened very carefully while saying very little, he returned.

‘I must apologize, Sienna, but I’m afraid something has come up and I’ll have to cut our meeting short. Perhaps, if you’re free for dinner tomorrow night, you will allow me to make it up to you?’

Sienna stood up. ‘Thank you. I’d like that very much.’ She held out her hand.

‘I’ll call for you around eight,’ he said, taking her hand in his. ‘We can walk from here. There’s a lot to see in the evenings in Cairo. I’m sure you’ll enjoy it.’

‘I look forward to it.’

With a slight nod and a quick smile, Mitchell turned and strode out, leaving Sienna to finish her tea.

*

Istanbul, Turkey

Larry stood on the broken-down veranda of his inheritance, going over the amazing chain of events that had led him to this place on this wet yet warm Istanbul evening.

It had seemed only a matter of hours after his mother told him of his inheritance before he was sitting on United Airlines 136 from Los Angeles to Frankfurt. From there, he caught a Lufthansa flight to Istanbul, arriving completely shattered. He had never flown on a long-haul flight before; in fact, he had never even been east of the Rockies, and he had inadvisably taken advantage of the extended drinking hours on board.

He took a taxi to the centre of the city, and the driver left him outside the Hotel Sapphire, a modest hotel in