The Lost Queen of Egypt: The Tomb of Nefertiti

By Terence Brown

For professor of Egyptology Henry Markham, this would be the crowning glory of his career: an intact tomb of Nefertiti, the great royal wife of Akhenaten and the heretic pharaoh of eighteenth dynasty Egypt, whose bust of exquisite beauty resides in the Berlin Museum, which he had searched for the last ten years. He had an unspoken passion for her only excelled by his young assistant, Steven Sinclair, whose visions and dreams of her haunted him, much to the annoyance of Helen Carter, the freelance journalist on-site who, with her business partner Mike Mitcham, the digs photographer, saw Nefertiti as a rival for his affections. Thanks to a gambling debt, Mike finds himself the proud owner of a large luxury mobile home that four Mossad agents are interested in, along with Emil Brogini, who did a drug deal with two Mossad rogue agents since deceased. The arrival of Henry’s estranged sister, Millicent, with her friend Jane Evesham, a gifted clairvoyant, does nothing to improve his temper, especially when Jane tells him they are in great danger. Can the danger come from four renegade Mossad agents or Emil Bratislav Brogini, Mr. Big in Cairo, into every racket going? Jane discovers that Helen has a latent gift of clairvoyance which, with their combined powers in a séance, sends them back to the eighteenth dynasty with Nefertiti, Akhenaten, and danger around every corner as they try to discover who is trying to kill them all using a large band of Libyan bandits. They survive ambushes, assassin’s knives, and chariot chases, finally getting back to their own time with Nefertiti.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris AU
• Release date: Oct 4, 2019
• ISBN: 9781796001068

Terence Brown

Terence Brown is Emeritus Professor of English at Trinity College, Dublin. Elected a member of the Irish Academy in 1992, he was also appointed Director of Irish Book Awards in 1987. He has been Visiting Professor at The Sorbonne, The University of New South Wales and is a Member of the International Association of Anglo Irish Literature. He is a senior fellow of TCD. Among his publications are a biography of George Moore, Dissolute Characters and An Ulster Renaissance: Poets from the North of Ireland.

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

THE DIG, 1980

The Land Rover lurched, bounced, and ground its way along the dusty, boulder-strewn track, leaving behind a wake of dust which seemed to hang motionless in the still early morning October air. The relative cool of the Egyptian winter was only a few weeks away, but determined to steal a march on the digging season, they had begun excavating the week before. Even at eight thirty, the temperature was climbing into the seventies; and already, the horizon was starting to break up as the heat haze took over. They still had twelve tortuous miles to go until their destination, set in the beige and brown limestone mountains of the Eastern Desert, which rose all around them. In prehistory, water flowing off the mountains had carved a valley through them, which now lay barren and arid. Boulders of every shape and size littered the floor of the wadi, requiring all of a driver’s skill and attention to keep to the barely negotiable track. The occupants of the Land Rover lurched to one side as it hit another rock.

‘Jesus Christ! Can’t you keep this heap on the road?’

Steven Stewart Sinclair smiled to himself as he wrestled with the wheel, not so much at the comment as the way it was said in a rich Australian drawl by Mike Mitchum, who as usual was not enjoying the drive and never at his best first thing in the morning, particularly after a night on the town. Last night had been a particularly late one as it would be the last opportunity he would get for a week to visit the bars and nightclubs of Cairo, so with his erstwhile drinking companion, John Winters, he had made the most of it and, as usual, wished he hadn’t. He gazed across at John, who smiled back, showing no outward signs of the night’s heavy drinking.

‘I thought you Aussies could take it,’ John taunted with only the faintest trace of a Yorkshire accent. ‘If I’d known you were that far gone, I’d have brought you back at ten o’clock.’ Not only was he a damn good administrator and accountant but he also spoke Arabic like a native and could hold his liquor, which never ceased to infuriate Mike, who glared balefully back.

‘For Christ’s sake, Steve, stop playing dodgems with the scenery.’ Mike’s head felt as if it were full of the rocks they were bouncing off while he felt distinctly queasy, not so much from the effects of last night as riding sideways, which never failed to upset him. Right now, he wished he had brought his super-deluxe air-conditioned American camper, which he had left behind in Cairo as, earlier, he had been in no condition to drive it. Now he made a mental note that, at the first opportunity, he was going back to pick it up. After all, why shouldn’t they live in comfort in the middle of nowhere, protected from the heat and flies?

What a surprise it would be for the rest of the team who knew nothing of his latest acquisition. In fact, he knew very little about it himself, having won it in a poker game the night before from a wealthy Syrian who, being short of cash, asked him if he would accept it as part of the stakes, an offer he readily accepted after a brief description of it. The Syrian had taken his losses gracefully – almost too gracefully, he conjectured, thinking about it with a relatively clear head – and had taken him to a large lock-up garage down a side street in Būlāq. He had expected to see a beat-up, ramshackle 10-year-old heap, so he was almost shocked sober by the gleaming 2-year-old monster. A brief tour of inspection impressed him even more, and he only half-listened to the Syrian’s story of how he’d acquired it from an Israeli couple in settlement of a debt and how he was about to put it on the market as he was returning to Syria. Deciding that the Syrian might try to welsh on the deal, he had taken the keys and driven it with great difficulty to the lock-up garage, from where a taxi had brought him back into town, just in time to meet Steve Sinclair at the Alhambra Nightclub to begin the night’s revels in earnest.

Helen Carter, sitting at the front next to Steve, had listened to their banter in silence; but now concerned with Mike’s welfare, she broke in, ‘I’ve got some Settlers in my bag, if you’d like a couple.’ And she began rummaging through her handbag.

‘No, I’m fine, honest,’ he protested, determined to preserve his macho image. ‘Thanks anyway, Helen.’

Mike targeted most women for the bedroom at some time or other, but Helen was different, not that she wasn’t attractive because she was, standing five feet five inches, blonde, with a trim figure, pretty face, and a ready smile. Under normal circumstances, she would be an ideal hunting material; but as he acknowledged to himself, she was Steve’s bird, and he wasn’t the sort to muscle in on anyone else’s relationship. Sure, he had tried it on in the early days of their partnership long before Steve, but it only took a couple of slaps, which packed a wallop equivalent to a tennis champion’s forearm serve, to clarify their relationship was strictly business. Besides, having known her for more than two years, she was more like a sister now and certainly a good mate. He admired her professionalism and felt they had a common bond, being freelancers – he as a photographer and she as a journalist. Now he vaguely wondered how much either of them would have to show for their efforts by the end of the season.

As the Land Rover hit another pothole, Prof Henry Markham – sitting next to Helen – hung on grimly to the door pull. Occasionally, the wadi would broaden out as the cliffs and hills on either side receded, only to close in again, sometimes reducing the valley width to as little as twenty yards. As leader of the expedition, his thoughts were already on the dig and what might come to light during the coming months’ work. The site looked promising with the clues already unearthed there and elsewhere, but as a seasoned veteran, he knew what he hoped to find would be little short of expecting a miracle. At the age of 53 with 32 years of excavating behind him in the Middle East, mainly in Egypt, he desperately needed to find ‘the big one’. True, he had made many discoveries and finds, some quite important; and more than once, the history books had to be rewritten because of his endeavours. But always, the truly exciting and sensational find had eluded him.

In his teens, he had read Howard Carter’s life story and of his discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamen virtually intact; since then, his burning private ambition had been to find a royal Egyptian tomb untouched. As he had grown older, his ambition had been watered down with cold reality as he acknowledged that he stood a better chance of winning the jackpot on the football pools a dozen times in a row than finding a royal tomb which hadn’t been pillaged by grave robbers. Nearly every tomb he had unearthed – whether it be noble, dignitary, or commoner – had been broken into mainly in antiquity and ransacked as the robbers searched for gold, silver, copper, unguents, jewellery, timber, clothing, and anything else of value. Only five of the commoners’ tombs he had excavated had escaped unscathed, which had contained interesting artefacts but nothing to increase the knowledge they already had of the ancient Egyptians, but this time …

The Land Rover bounced over several rocks half hidden by the sand, throwing everyone about. The calls from behind were louder as Mike Mitchum pitched forwards through the newspaper Kemel Habib was attempting to read and into his outstretched arms.

‘Well, that’s a side of you I’ve never seen before,’ Alan Grayson said, keeping a straight face.

‘Sorry, Kemel! I think he’s trying to kill us!’ Mike shouted, indignantly picking up the crumpled newspaper and handing it back.

‘Sorry!’ Steve shouted lightly. ‘We don’t want you falling asleep and missing the scenery!’

‘Stuff the scenery’ came the heartfelt reply. ‘With apologies to you, Kemel,’ he added, remembering he was an Egyptian.

Kemel grimaced amiably. ‘I quite understand. Right now, I’d settle for one of your glorious English summer’s days with all the lovely rain.’ A ripple of laughter surfaced above the noise.

Kemel was one of those modern elite Egyptians who had experienced a full Westernised upbringing, thanks to his Coptic Christian parents. His surgeon father and biologist mother had expected him to follow in one or the other’s footsteps, but from an early age, he’d displayed a keen interest and natural aptitude for archaeology, particularly Egyptology. Neither had been disappointed when he had elected to study for a degree in archaeology at Cambridge, where he first met Steve, who had been studying for the same degree. They had immediately hit it off and had been firm friends ever since. Having both graduated with honours, they had gone their separate ways, Steve as assistant to Sir Vincent Strong, head of Egyptology at the British Museum, and Kemel to the Department of Antiquities in Cairo, where he had quickly risen to be chief inspector of security, with the unenviable task of combating the ever-resourceful black market in antiquities. Over the years, they had kept in touch and had both spent long holidays at each other’s homes with the total acceptance of their families.

‘Just a minute’, Mike said, holding on to the newspaper as he caught sight of what was obviously a passport photograph of a man near the bottom of the front page. ‘I know that fella. He’s the Syrian I played cards with last night. What’s it say about him?’

Kemel studied the Arabic script, reading the full article before replying, ‘Mm, you were fortunate not to have stayed with him longer as he was killed in what was believed to be a hit-and-run accident sometime around midnight. The police are not satisfied it was an accident, however, as the bruising and cuts were very extensive and not consistent with being hit by a car, so they are continuing to investigate.’

‘Jesus’, Mike muttered, obviously shocked. ‘So it sounds as if he was beaten up before he was killed.’

‘That seems to be what they’re implying,’ Kemel replied.

‘Was he robbed?’ Mike asked.

‘No’, Kemel answered. ‘His wallet contained a substantial amount of money in cash and traveller’s cheques.’

‘You don’t say,’ said Mike, now deep in thought. If he had so much ready cash, why had he put the camper up as part of the bet? True, he’d said he wanted to be rid of it before returning to Syria; but thinking back, he’d not exactly been heartbroken when he’d lost, which any normal gambler would have been, particularly in this neck of the woods where a loss of that magnitude would not have been taken lightly. In fact, he had been quite happy about it afterwards, which suggested that he wanted to be rid of it for some other reason. The legal ownership documents told him nothing, being in Arabic and another language he hadn’t instantly recognised; but to his befuddled mind, they had appeared in order, although to be fair he had been distracted by the price.

‘Mekmhet Tambouri’, Kemel enlightened him, ‘a businessman from Damascus.’

‘Translate that for me, will you?’ Mike handed him the registration document.

‘It’s a vehicle registration document. I can’t make out the first part as it’s in Hebrew, so presumably, the original owners were Israelis. But certainly, Mekmhet Tambouri is the name in what looks like the transfer of ownership section.’

‘Thank god for that,’ Mike replied.

‘Did you buy a car from this character?’ asked a surprised Steve Sinclair.

‘Well, not exactly. You see, I—’

‘I hate to break into this fascinating conversation,’ Steve broke in. ‘But does anybody know why we’re being followed?’

Mike breathed a sigh of relief, off the hook and the surprise still intact. He followed up his advantage. ‘Followed’, he echoed incredulously. ‘What makes you think we’re being followed?’ All eyes turned to survey the grey dust cloud billowing out behind.

‘A few miles back, I noticed – as we turned left or right – a second dust cloud a little way behind ours, so I slowed down to let whoever it was catch up, only they didn’t. They dropped their speed to match ours, so I accelerated for a couple of miles, and so did they, always keeping the same distance between us.’

An awkward silence descended on the group as they studied the impenetrable dust cloud now rising behind them in a straight line. ‘Really, Steve?’ Helen admonished him. ‘There’s no need to be so melodramatic about it. It’s probably one of the work crew’s buses coming up from the village.’

‘Not at this time’, Professor Markham countered. ‘They should have been there hours ago as should we if we hadn’t had to wait for that equipment coming in from London. Mindst you, if they’d had a breakdown—’

‘OK’, Steve acknowledged. ‘But that still doesn’t explain why they should slow down and speed up.’

‘Are you sure you haven’t made a mistake?’ Kemel asked.

‘There’s only one way to find out,’ Steve went on. ‘Another half mile, and the ground will be firmer and stonier, which should reduce our dust cloud to next to nothing, so I’ll pull up at a likely spot and see who materialises. All agreed?’ They all readily agreed.

‘You did pay your hotel bill, didn’t you, Mike?’ Alan Grayson asked, winking at Kemel. Mike gave him a sickly grin without replying.

The next four minutes passed in silence as the Land Rover growled and crunched its way along the dried-up ancient wadi. The heavily fissured limestone cliffs now closed in on either side in mixed colours and shades of brown, yellow, and white. Even at this time of the year, there was scant shade as the sun climbed into the sky, seeking out every shadow. The going certainly became firmer but no less easy as now all the driver’s skill was needed to avoid the countless boulders of all sizes which littered the floor of the ravine, which in width now varied between twenty and eighty yards. For over millions of years, massive cracks had broken up the cliff faces caused by the extremes of heat and cold. At the bases of many of the fissures, piles of scree had accumulated as the torrential thunderstorms, which now and then occurred, had washed the loose debris down to give the effect of miniature glaciers. Three hundred yards in, the ravine’s course turned sharply to the right, where after rounding the bend Steve pulled up.

‘Well, Mike, as the expedition’s professional photographer, I need hardly to ask if you’ve got your cameras with you.’

Mike grinned. ‘Never without ’em. I get the picture. Let’s hope they’re photogenic.’

Everyone scrambled out, glad of the opportunity to stretch their legs and enjoy the cool of what little shade remained. No bird call or other sounds, except for their voices, broke the timeless silence as Kemel and the professor theorised about who could be behind them, while Helen continued to dismiss the incident, crediting Steve’s imagination with being too active, partly to allay her own feeling of unease. Mike, meanwhile, had taken station in the middle of the track with camera at the ready.

Professor Markham looked at his watch. ‘I hope this delay will be worthwhile as we’re getting on for two hours late already!’ he exclaimed somewhat testily.

The general conversation stopped as the faint sound of a car engine broke the prevailing silence. For what seemed like an eternity, the noise slowly gathered strength until, suddenly, a dust-covered white Mercedes hove into sight and was almost on them before the startled driver and his passenger could react. This they did with amazing alacrity but not before Mike had gotten several shots of them both as they slewed to a halt no more than thirty feet away. The two men in the car appeared to be of Arabic origin in their late twenties, the driver being clean-shaven with high cheekbones, while his passenger sported a thick moustache with a fuller face and large nose. Upon seeing Mike with his camera, the passenger instantly covered his face with his hands, but he was already too late as Mike’s camera clicked away.

A cloud of dust and stones were thrown up as the car hurtled back, swinging off the track to turn round, coming to an abrupt halt as a large boulder mangled its nearside rear lights. With wheels spinning, it shot off at high speed the way it had come. Although it was all over in a matter of seconds, Mike’s camera never stopped its remorseless clicking, capturing the occupants and every move they made. The noise of the engine quickly receded, leaving only a cloud of dust hanging heavily in the still early morning air to remind them that the little drama had actually happened.

‘Well, what do you make of that?’ asked a shocked Helen, still staring back down the track.

‘Extraordinary behaviour!’ exclaimed Professor Markham.

‘Anyone recognise them?’ Steve asked, to which question he got negative replies from the little group, except Mike, who seemed engrossed with packing his camera away.

‘What about you, Mike? Any of your friends?’ Steve persisted.

‘Forget it,’ Mike returned adamantly. ‘Faces like that you don’t forget easily. If I’d seen ’em, I’d know ’em. Anyway, when this little baby’s developed, we can study ’em at leisure.’

‘Yes, well, one thing’s for sure,’ went on the professor. ‘They were up to no good.’

‘I quite agree,’ Kemel added. ‘When the film’s developed, I’d like a couple of prints to send to some friends of mine in the police department in Cairo. It might prove interesting.’

Alan Grayson chuckled wryly. ‘Well, they certainly didn’t like having their pictures taken. Did you see the passenger’s reaction when Mike started shooting?’

‘I wouldn’t like to meet those two down a dark alley at night,’ Helen said, suppressing a shudder.

‘You’d frighten the daylights out of ’em, love.’ Mike laughed, ducking as she took a swipe at him.

‘We may not know what they wanted,’ Steve went on. ‘But if they come back, I’ll guarantee that roll of film will figure pretty high on their shopping list.’

‘Stop it,’ Helen snapped, turning away, feeling rattled by what he had implied.

‘Sorry, Helen,’ he apologised, slipping his arm round her shoulders. ‘Where are those nerves of steel you journalists are supposed to have?’

She looked up at him, forcing a smile. ‘Yes, you’re right. I’ve been in worse situations than this, only it looks so sinister.’

‘There’s probably a simple explanation for their behaviour,’ broke in Professor Markham in an effort to calm her fears.

‘Yes’, Alan went on. ‘They were probably just a couple of tourists and mistook us for a bunch of bandits waiting to ambush them.’

‘Ha, ha’, said Mike ironically.

Alan squared up to him. ‘All right, if you can do better—’

‘Gentlemen, gentlemen’, broke in Professor Markham, ‘his is getting us nowhere. We’re already several hours behind schedule, so I suggest we press on and theorise later.’

The track was now almost invisible as they weaved along the valley floor while the cliffs seemed to close in menacingly, only to recede with only the varying width of the valley to break the scenic monotony of cliffs, screes, rubble, and boulders. Silence descended on the group as each pondered on the events that had just overtaken them. ‘What a desolate place!’ Helen finally declared, shouting above the noise of the engine. ‘Does it ever rain here?’

‘Very rarely, but when it does, believe me, it rains,’ Professor Markham replied. ‘The weather never does things by halves. It may be as long as seven years between one rainfall and the next. Then a thunderstorm comes out of nowhere, which in a quarter of an hour can fill these ravines and gullies with raging torrents. The water disappears as fast as it came but often not without doing some sort of damage. As you can imagine, that amounts to an enormous number of flash floods over the last 5,000 years, and it’s more than one tomb I’ve seen ruined by water penetration.’

Helen looked shocked. ‘Really, I’d no idea. It’s so difficult to comprehend when you look at the bone-dry aridness. I mean, it all looks so timeless and changeless as if not so much as a stone’s been moved in 10,000 years.’

Steve laughed. ‘Well, you can bet your boots this area looked different 5,000 years ago.’

‘Yes, it certainly would have,’ Kemel agreed. ‘The pharaoh’s architects were well aware of the damage a flash flood could do to a poorly sited tomb, which is one of the reasons they chose the locations carefully. The deep pits dug into the floors of many of the tombs’ passages were put there not only to deter grave robbers but also to catch floodwater.’

‘It was mid-January the first time I came to Egypt,’ Helen went on. ‘A friend warned me to take some warm clothes, but I couldn’t believe it could be cold at any time of the year, so I ignored the advice and packed only summer clothes. When we landed at Cairo Airport, it looked so warm and sunny until we got off the plane. The wind was blowing down the Nile Valley from the north and went through my summer dress like a knife. All the regular passengers were well muffled up, and I got plenty of knowing grins by the time we got to reception. My first buy in Cairo was sweaters.’

Kemel laughed. ‘You’re not the first to be caught that way. When I first went to England, I was amazed at how warm it usually was during the winter, thanks to the cloud cover you often have, whereas here, even in summer after sunset, without any clouds to hold the heat in, the temperature can drop pretty rapidly and even more so in winter.’

‘I find the best insulation for the cold is a double Scotch,’ Mike cut in. ‘I remember one cold November night in Cairo. I’d just got back to my hotel room when there was a knock at the door, and who should be standing there but a gorgeous blonde holding a bottle of whisky.’

‘All right, all right, spare us the gory details,’ broke in Alan Grayson. ‘Ah, at last, home sweet home.’ Rounding a bend, the valley suddenly widened, and a scene of intense activity came into view.

CHAPTER 2

VISITORS

Directly in front of them was a motley selection of vehicles, tents, and equipment, beyond which to their left were a large number of local villagers, or fellahin, working on a large bank of scree which spilled out of a deep cleft in the cliff face.

‘Mm, looks as if John’s got things under control,’ Professor Markham said with a note of approval in his voice. John and Valerie Winters had already been on site now for three weeks, planning and organising the camp, living in a four-berth caravan that John had acquired cheaply in Cairo. Now in their early thirties, both were old hands at archaeological digs, having spent the previous twelve years at digs in every part of the Middle East since gaining their degrees in archaeology. It had only been six months before that they had been recruited by Professor Markham whilst on a dig at Byblos. They had been only too happy to join his team, having worked with him on several occasions. The professor had been equally glad to have them as they were both born organisers and fluent in Arabic, John particularly so, and he could think of no one better to supervise and organise the workforce. In Valerie, he had the perfect foil – surprisingly inexhaustible, permanently cheerful with an extrovert nature that seemed to inspire confidence and well-being in all who knew her.

As they pulled up at the big tent, which served as their headquarters, Valerie emerged, smiling cheerfully as ever. ‘Morning, Henry, been having problems?’

Professor Markham quickly filled her in on the journey’s events, to which she listened without comment until he had finished.

‘Well, I must say it seems a strange thing to do, but probably seeing you lot standing in the middle of the road, obviously intent on stopping them, put the wind up them. I must say, if I’d been driving their car, I would have done the same.’

‘Yes, Val,’ Steve cut in. ‘And nobody would have blamed you, but these two guys looked pretty unsavoury and well able to take care of themselves, besides which the last thing they wanted was having their photo taken, not forgetting they had definitely been following us, probably since we left Cairo.’

‘Oh dear. Then I’m sure I don’t know what to make of it,’ she added with a puzzled frown.

‘Probably making a mountain out of a molehill,’ Professor Markham went on. ‘Anyway, I shouldn’t worry about it, Val. Now has anything significant come to light?’ He asked it somewhat impatiently, barely concealing his excitement, which wasn’t altogether unnoticed by Valerie.

‘Why, Henry Markham,’ she said with mock surprise, ‘I do believe your cool is slipping. I’ve never seen you so excited.’

‘Nonsense.’ Professor Markham snorted, standing on his dignity. ‘Don’t send me up, Val. You know how important this is to me.’

‘Yes, I know,’ she replied soothingly, smiling at him and regretting she had made the remark. ‘No, nothing new except shale, shale, and more shale, but I’m sure we’re on the right track.’

‘So am I,’ he answered with enthusiasm. ‘Well, anything further to report?’

‘Yes, you sly old dog Henry. You never told me you had a sister.’

‘Sister’, he echoed blankly.

‘Yes, sister—you know, the opposite of brother. She arrived with a friend early this morning in that hired Renault.’

The car she pointed was parked at the side of the HQ tent, its colour of pale yellow shrouded in anonymity by a thick coating of dust. But for his tanned complexion, Professor Markham would have looked distinctly pale. ‘Good god! Millicent here?’

‘Yes. John’s giving them a guided tour of the site.’

‘You never told me you had a sister, Henry,’ Steve said with good-humoured surprise.

‘Millicent and I have never been particularly close,’ blustered the professor.

How true that is, he reflected. They had never been or were ever likely to be. Amanda Millicent Markham was no man’s woman and, from an early age, had resented the fact that Henry had been born a man instead of her. The one thing they had in common was their dislike of Millicent’s first name for very different reasons – Millicent because it was far too feminine, and Henry because it had always been one of his favourite names for a girl, and he could think of few people less deserving of such an attractive name than Millicent, having the build of a pocket battle ship, who would have been more at home in a rugby scrum.

During childhood, Henry had sought solace in his toys and friends, leaving the forthright, strong-willed Millicent centre stage at home. They had both gone on to university, Henry to study archaeology and Millicent economics, but thankfully – as far as Henry was concerned – different university. After graduating, Millicent had pursued what had promised to be a successful career in the civil service; but after five years, out of the blue, Henry heard she had given it up to become an active member of CND and Green peace and over the years had been in the forefront of most of their campaigns.

He remembered with a shudder the last time he had seen her. It had been by chance while watching Channel 4 News. It had been a brief shot, but there had been no mistaking Millicent as one of a small group of women who had chained themselves to the fence at Greenham Common, hurling vitriolic abuse at the police who were attempting to remove them. He pitied the poor police sergeant, who would later have had to charge her with God knows what, and imagined him wilting under the torrent of verbiage she would have lambasted him with.

‘What on earth is she doing here?’ he asked Valerie, totally perplexed.

‘Well, she wasn’t very forthcoming on that point, but I gather she wants to see you.’

Professor Markham’s mind raced through all the possibilities but couldn’t come up with one concrete reason why the sister he hadn’t seen since their mother’s funeral eight years before should suddenly want to see him. Whatever the reason, he conjectured, it must be desperately urgent for her to come all this way without warning him and then make a very uncomfortable trip into the back of beyond.

Valerie’s voice broke into his thoughts. ‘Cheer up, Henry, I’m sure she can’t be that bad. Her friend Mrs Evesham seemed quite jolly. I’m amazed they didn’t get lost driving out here.’

‘Not Milly, she’s a veritable walking compass.’ Ruefully, he remembered when they were children, if they went for a picnic in the woods, inevitably, he was the one who got lost, while Millicent would return unerringly on time to their parents and, more than once, led the search party for him.

‘I don’t suppose they’ll stay long as there’s not much to see,’ Valerie continued. ‘Well, if you bring your gear, I’ll show you to your tents. Helen, you’ll be bunking with me in the caravan.’

‘What about John?’ Helen cut in.

‘Don’t worry about John. He’ll be in with Professor Markham.’

‘Are you sure?’ Helen went on, concerned.

‘Positive, it was his idea. Steve and Kemel, you’re in the middle tent. And, Mike and Alan, yours is the one at the end. If anyone’s not happy with the arrangements, they’re welcome to swap around.’

‘Suits me,’ Mike said, picking up his bags. ‘That is unless Helen fancies more of the outdoor life. I’m sure Alan wouldn’t mind swapping.’ He grinned cheekily.

What, and risk keeping you awake all night with my noisy typewriter? That would never do,’ she lightly admonished him.

Professor Markham now took charge of the situation. ‘All right, everyone, as soon as you’re unpacked and settled in, make your way across to the dig. That’s where you’ll find me.’

As they dispersed, Valerie looked anxiously at the professor. ‘Henry, I hope you don’t mind. I’ve asked your sister and her friend to stay overnight. I had no idea you didn’t get on.’

‘No, no, that’s all right, Val. I’m probably giving you the wrong impression of Milly. Basically, the reason we’ve never been close is that we’ve never had anything in common. I know about as much of her profession as she knows of mine – nothing. I suppose her heart’s in the right place. It’s just that she’s rather forceful and somewhat intense, so be warned. Don’t let her brow beat you. Show her who’s boss, and she’ll respect you for it, something I’ve never been able to do.’ He gave her a wry smile and went into his tent.

By 9.30 a.m. little shade remained as the sun rose higher, gathering strength, breaking up the opposite side of the valley into a shimmering heat haze. Professor Markham strode purposefully across to where John Winters was standing at the foot of the scree with the two visitors, engaged in an animated conversation with Shasli Rasoul, the dig foreman. As he neared the little group, the foreman moved off to rejoin his forty strong workforce toiling on the scree slope and, with much shouting and waving of arms, harangued them into greater effort primarily – as Professor Markham rightly surmised – for his benefit as his approach had not gone unnoticed.

‘Good morning, John. Hello, Milly. Well, this is a surprise. How nice to see you after all this time,’ Professor Markham said, putting on a cheery air he certainly didn’t feel.

‘Morning, Henry,’ Millicent replied in her best headmistress’s tone, giving him a half-laconic smile. ‘You always were a lousy liar. I’d like you to meet my friend Jane Evesham. We were in Cairo, and I heard you were in this quarter, so we decided to pop over and see if you’d dug anything up.’

‘Dug anything up!’ Professor Markham bristled, ignoring Jane Evesham.

‘Yes, you know, golden mummies like King Tut. As far as I can see, you haven’t found a blessed thing. I’m not surprised in this godforsaken hellhole.’

Professor Markham’s face contorted and twitched, but he refused to rise to the bait as, suddenly, he remembered Jane Evesham. She was a small well-built dark-haired lady in her early fifties who, during this interchange, had listened, slightly bemused. ‘My dear lady, I do apologise. How do you do?’ He shook her hand warmly, being only too glad to deviate from Millicent’s uninformed onslaught. ‘I do hope you’ll enjoy your stay with us, brief though it may be, but I think it only fair to warn you we have no facilities for visitors. But if you’re prepared to muck in with the rest of us, I’m sure you’ll enjoy your visit.’

‘Don’t worry about me. I’m used to roughing it when I was a Girl Guide leader, and you must call me Jane.’

‘And you must call me Henry,’ he answered, thinking that she seemed quite civilised compared with Millicent.

‘Henry!’ Millicent boomed. ‘If you must clear this rock pile, why don’t you get a mechanical excavator on the job and clear it in a matter of hours instead of an endless stream of workmen each carrying a basketful at a time? It’s terribly inefficient, and at this rate, it’ll take weeks to move that lot.’

Professor Markham could feel his blood pressure rising but gritted his teeth and remained calm. ‘My dear Millicent, if we were to use an excavator, we might lose, overlook, or destroy valuable clues or artefacts. This way may be slow, but nothing is overlooked.’

‘What is it you’re looking for?’ Millicent asked. ‘I’ve asked John, but I haven’t been able to get a straight answer.’ She snorted, giving John Winters one of her withering grade one looks reserved for deflating, pompous officials.

‘Henry, I tried to explain—’

‘It’s all right, John,’ Professor Markham broke in. ‘We’ve done well to keep it a secret as long as we have. It’s time we put Mike and Helen in the picture too. Milly, tonight at dinner, I’ll tell you what we’re looking for and – God willing – I hope we’ve found, although even at this stage it’s still only a long shot.’

‘Is this something we’ve missed out on?’ Mike asked, overhearing the tail end of the conversation. Professor Markham turned to find that the rest of the party had joined them, and after brief introductions, Mike picked up on his question. ‘What’s the mystery, Professor?’

‘Is it what we’re looking for?’ Helen asked eagerly.

Professor Markham looked slightly guilty. ‘All right, all right, I promise you after dinner tonight all will be revealed. Now we really must get to work. We’ve lost enough time—’

An excited shout from the top of the scree slope interrupted him as all eyes turned to see Shasli Rasoul waving frantically. ‘Hello, this looks promising. It looks as if he’s found something,’ John said, setting off up the slope, closely followed by the others.

By the time Millicent and Jane, assisted by Steve and Kemel, got to the top, Professor Markham and the others were already high with excitement. ‘Well done, Shasli! We’ll make an archaeologist of you yet!’ he shouted, clapping the grinning foreman on the back.

‘Look, Steve,’ he went on. ‘What do you make of that?’

‘Yes, no doubt about it,’ Steve confirmed, staring intently at the cliff face which had just been exposed.

‘No doubt about what?’ Millicent retorted, looking at the blank, unmarked rock. ‘There’s not a blessed thing there.’

‘Oh, but there is,’ Professor Markham expounded, hardly able to contain his excitement. ‘Look again, Milly, and tell me what you see.’

‘Just a smooth rock face,’ she snapped, getting hotter and more impatient by the minute.

‘Exactly, smooth rock face, whereas all the rock above is rough.’

‘You mean the stone’s been worked?’ Helen asked.

‘Precisely, and I’ll lay odds, a little farther down, we’ll find an inscription.’

‘What sort of inscription?’ Millicent persisted, now feeling well out of her depth but beginning to be affected by the general air of excitement.

‘That, my dear Milly, remains to be seen. All right, Shasli, get the men back to work, and make sure every bit of rubble is double-checked.’

‘Yes, effendi,’ Shasli acknowledged, beaming broadly, and then with much shouting and gesticulating got his crew toiling with renewed enthusiasm as all eyes looked for that special something which might turn up in the next sieve full.

As they talked, Mike took pictures of the group, the workmen, and finally the rock face. ‘You’re not expecting to find anything valuable in this lot, are you?’ he asked John Winters, talking about the rubble.

John smiled. ‘No, but you might find a workman’s broken tool, something he dropped by accident, or even a piece of ostraca.’

‘Os-what?’ Millicent broke in.

‘Ostraca, sun-baked terracotta and thin flakes of limestone, which with papyrus was the ancient Egyptians’ equivalent of writing paper.’

‘I’ll bet all the postmen had double hernias,’ Mike said laconically. There was general laughter except for Kemel, who seemed preoccupied with something happening behind them on the far side of the valley.

‘What is it, Kemel? You look worried,’ Professor Markham asked.

‘It’s nothing. Henry, could I have a word with you, please?’ Taking hold of Professor Markham’s arm, he led him across the scree away from the others. ‘I think we’re being watched,’ Kemel said casually.

Professor Markham looked startled. ‘What makes you think so?’

‘On the way over from camp and while we’ve been standing here, I’ve noticed several small flashes of sunlight reflected off something on the top of the cliff directly opposite, which at a guess I would say was binoculars.’

‘Who the devil would want to watch us, unless it was the two gentlemen we met on the road this morning?’

‘Quite possibly. I can’t see Brogini using any of his men in such an obvious way,’ Kemel answered quietly.

‘Why not?’

‘With a selection of the workforce already on his payroll, he’ll have little need for extra informants. I’ll lay odds he knows of any discovery we make almost as soon as we do.’

‘Is this a private conversation, or can anyone join in?’ Helen asked, suddenly appearing between them. ‘You two are acting like a couple of conspirators. What guilty secrets have you got to hide, and who is Brogini?’

‘Brogini?’ Kemel answered, glancing at Professor Markham for an indication of whether to enlighten her.

Professor Markham sighed. ‘Well, my dear, there’s no point in denying it. You’ll hear about him soon enough if you stay in this part of the world for any length of time. However, Kemel’s better qualified to fill you in on the nefarious Mr Brogini than I am.’

Sensing a possible story, Helen produced a small tape recorder from her handbag. ‘Do you mind if I tape this?’

The men exchanged glances. Professor Markham shook his head, leaving Kemel to get on with the story, while he – in what he hoped was an unobtrusive fashion to any would-be watchers – scoured the opposite cliffs for any sort of movement.

‘Nobody knows for sure where he originates from. All we do know is that Emil Bratislav Brogini arrived in this country eleven years ago on a flight from Iran. According to his passport, he’s a Romanian citizen, and his age now will be 40. Rumour has it that his mother was from Lebanon, where he spent his early life getting a good education at Beirut University, probably with a good grounding in Egyptology. That sums up all we know of his earlier life, except that rumour has it he had to leave Iran in a hurry. Apparently, he’d been in the black market in a big way until things got too hot for him. Anyway, he arrived here and managed to get on several important digs, artefacts which started appearing on the illegal private market.

‘To cut a long story short, he left the last dig he was on under a cloud. Then a few days later, the leader of that dig fell from the balcony of his hotel in Cairo. At that time, the trading in pillaged and stolen artefacts was disorganised, being limited to a handful of known back street dealers. Then almost overnight, they shut up shop, disappeared, or suffered fatal accidents. To all intents and purposes, the trading in illegal artefacts stopped. Shortly after, we started getting a feedback that various big private collectors of antiquities scattered around the world were doing better than ever, but who was supplying them we could never discover. The finger finally pointed at Brogini, but by then, he was running a legitimate import and export business. The ironic thing is one of the lines he exports is reproductions of artefacts.’

‘Make no mistake about it,’ Professor Markham broke in. ‘Brogini is one of the few men I know who, nine times out of ten, can spot a fake from the real thing. And believe me, Helen, that is not easy.’

‘It sure isn’t, Kemel agreed. ‘If anyone approaches you with artefacts to sell, you can guarantee they will be fakes, most glaringly bad but some exceedingly good, in fact, good enough to take in the experts, eh, Henry?’

Professor Markham looked somewhat embarrassed, shrugged, and shuffled his feet. ‘Humph, quite so, more often than one would expect, but we digress. The head of Egyptology, Zahi Hawass, is not a happy man. It’s a trade we have to stop. Over the last couple of years, we know Brogini has diversified. And much of his income is derived from extortion, prostitution, robberies, fencing stolen goods, blackmail, contract killing – in fact, every racket you care to name, with drug trafficking being his biggest money-spinner.’

‘So he’s Mr Big in these parts, is he?’ Helen asked.

‘Very much so, I’m afraid,’ Kemel confirmed. ‘The police and my department have done their best to get the goods on him, but he’s always one step ahead of us. It’s certain he’ll have his people in both departments on the take, which would account for why we’re always caught flat footed.’

Helen frowned. ‘With all the money pouring in from the various rackets, why would he bother with antiquities?’

It was Professor Markham who answered her question. ‘Make no mistake; you can be sure that antiquities will still be responsible for a sizeable share of his profits. There’s always a steady flow of artefacts from villagers who live near known archaeological sites, many of which have yet to be explored. Besides, the man has a genuine interest in archaeology, unfortunately for the wrong reasons. He’s a keen collector himself, not just Egyptian artefacts but also paintings, sculpture, furniture, you name it. If nothing else, you’ve got to admire his good taste, collects nothing but the best.’

‘All legal and above board,’ Kemel broke in. ‘You forgot to mention his good taste also extends to the ladies.’

‘Yes, well, a man like that always attracts a certain type of woman, in his case a whole string of them over the last four years.’

‘Now, Henry, do I detect a note of envy?’ Helen teased.

Professor Markham humphed. ‘It would be difficult not to. Pity the man who’s gone the way he has. He would have made a damn fine archaeologist, certainly got the gift for it.’

‘You sound as if you’ve met him,’ Helen said, her interest now fully aroused.

‘Oh, I have, on several occasions at various parties. I found him to be the personification of charm itself.’

‘Now you can only be talking about me,’ Mike said, packing his camera away as he joined the group.

‘What would a wallaby like you know about charm?’ Helen chided him.

The next five minutes was spent on filling Mike in on the suspected watchers across the valley and the infamous Emil Brogini, at the end of which he looked thoughtful. ‘Yeah, I’ve heard the name before. It’s cropped up a couple of times in conversations in nightclubs. Every time I tried to find out who he was, the shutters would go up. From that, I gathered he wasn’t exactly flavour of the month. Look, I’ve got a telephoto lens in the tent. I’ll just drift over there and take a quiet look-see over the valley.’

‘Very well,’ Professor Markham consented. ‘But do it discreetly, and not a word to the ladies. No point in alarming them unnecessarily.’ How Jane Evesham might react he had no idea, but he could guarantee Millicent wouldn’t bat an eyelid.

‘No sweat, Professor. You know me, the soul of discretion.’

‘Huh!’ Helen exclaimed, raising her eyes, to which Mike answered with a look of feigned innocence as he ambled off.

Millicent and Jane, escorted by Steve and John, picked their way slowly down the slope to join Kemel and the professor. ‘What I don’t understand is why those enormous heaps of limestone chippings farther down the valley are so important,’ said Millicent, intent on not letting the matter rest until after dinner. ‘It looks like a natural part of the scenery to me.’

‘My dear Milly,’ Professor Markham replied, controlling his irritation with difficulty, ‘anyone with half an eye can see those chippings haven’t been disturbed for thousands of years.’

‘How?’ Millicent asked, determined to ferret on regardless.

‘Because most of the spoil is several inches deep under a thick layer of windblown dust, while that which is still exposed has weathered to a brownish yellow. Turn any piece over, and underneath, you’ll find it as white as driven snow. Just as white as the day, it was hacked out of one of those cliff faces.’

‘You mean those monumental heaps are man made?’ asked Jane incredulously.

‘Every single chip’, Professor Markham confirmed, glad of her intervention.

‘But surely that would leave an enormous hole?’ Jane persisted, taking up the questioning.

‘Not if it was a network of tunnels with various chambers along its length.’

‘So that’s what you think is under all this rock. How exciting,’ Jane added.

‘Undoubtedly. To leave mounds of that size means they must be pretty extensive.’

‘But why go to the trouble of dumping it at the other end of the valley?’ rejoined Millicent, determined to regain the initiative.

‘Quite simply to throw would-be tomb robbers off the scent. Don’t forget, even in antiquity, grave robbing was an even more thriving and lucrative business than it is today. Most tombs were broken into and ransacked within the first few years after sealing. Even Tutankhamen’s was broken into, but the entry point was discovered before the looters had a chance to do any real damage. The necropolis priests resealed it. Then unbelievably, it lapsed into obscurity.’

‘Weren’t the priests sworn to secrecy and the labour force slaughtered and buried with whoever they had made the tomb for?’ asked Millicent; drawing on the dim memory of a film she had once seen.

Professor Markham laughed loudly. ‘Don’t believe everything you see at the movies. Either that or you’ve been reading the wrong books, Milly. They killed no one. Don’t forget it would take a whole team of highly skilled craftsmen to construct a tomb from start to finish. Architects would draw up the plans, engineers would have to select the right location where the rock strata was suitable, and then they could start tunnelling. A small