‘For God’s sake, Kirby. I haven’t got time for all this.’
Kirby held up a finger. ‘Bear with me. This is where it gets exciting. Because the letter was addressed to Sanep, the High Priest of Thebes, and in it Diodore revealed an amazing secret. He was confessing, openly and willingly, to one of the biggest heists in the history of Egypt. But it wasn’t a crime he was ashamed of, or that he’d be punished for. In fact, if the letter had ever been finished and reached its destination, he would have been brought back to Egypt and paraded through the streets as a hero. Let me tell you why.’
Ben didn’t reply. Waited for the rest. Maybe, just maybe, this was getting interesting.
‘You need to flash back a few years,’ Kirby continued. ‘To when Diodore wasn’t Diodore at all. His real name was Wenkaura and he was Egyptian, born in Thebes. He’d been one of the city’s most revered and influential High Priests, and in those days Sanep was his young novice. Now, in the letter Wenkaura describes how, back in the year 1344 BC, he and two of his fellow clergymen, Katep and Menamun, had all decided they had to do something to prevent the disaster that Akhenaten was bringing down on their country and their religion.’
Ben was listening now. ‘Do what?’
‘Well, imagine the situation. All this is happening around you. Everyone’s convinced that the king is batshit-mad. He’s threatening the very survival of the state with his cultural revolution and this nutcase sun cult. Destroying all these magnificent treasures, priceless even at the time, and everything you believe in. The situation isn’t going to get better on its own. What would you do? What would you have to do? Think about it.’
Ben already knew the answer.
Kirby grinned at the look on his face. ‘Right. One option they had was to conspire to have the bastard assassinated. I’m sure they must have thought about it. But a murder plot was too risky-he had agents and informants everywhere. Nobody could be trusted. So they decided to wait it out, in the hope that once this reign of madness was over, normality would be restored. It was only a question of time.’
‘So they decided to hide the treasure for posterity,’ Ben said. ‘Hoping that one day, it could be returned to its rightful place.’
Kirby nodded enthusiastically as he took another gulp of whisky. ‘Wenkaura, Katep and Menamun didn’t want the treasure for themselves. They saw themselves as its stewards, its protectors. So they used their influence to salvage all they could over a period of several months, maybe a year, and stored it up in a secret location in Thebes. Bit by bit, they started stashing it away, somewhere it could never be found, using what power they still had to keep the operation secret. But it was a wildly risky thing to do. Suicidal. Sooner or later the pharaoh’s agents were bound to get wise, and they did. Informants talked, people were tortured. Suddenly the priests were marked men, and it became impossible for them to keep shifting treasure the way they’d been doing. They stashed the last of it wherever they could, somewhere out in the desert. Wenkaura described how he was able to smuggle himself out of Thebes safely by stowing away on board a merchant vessel. He only heard later what became of Katep and Menamun. Rather than be captured and tortured, they’d committed suicide by drinking poison.’
‘Wenkaura fled to Syria?’
‘A resourceful guy, clearly. He got himself a job as a private tutor to a rich man’s son, assumed his new identity and became Diodore. Years went by. Then one day he heard the news. Akhenaten had died. Maybe assassinated, nobody knows. Suddenly the old order was being restored, Akhenaten’s reforms and his name were stamped in the dirt, and his successor, Tutankhamun, reinstated the old religion with Amun as head of the gods. It was Wenkaura’s dream come true. He was old and sick by then, and scared that if he didn’t act soon, the secret of the treasure would go to his grave with him. He sat down and started writing his letter. Sadly, or perhaps not so sadly, it was never sent. We never knew why. Maybe he died before he got the chance to finish it. Maybe he had second thoughts. Who knows? Who cares? What matters is, we found it. And that treasure is still out there, just waiting.’
Ben was quiet for a few moments, taking it all in. ‘Is this for real, Kirby? Because there’s a hell of a lot riding on it.’
‘Trust me, it’s very for real. Morgan and I spent months deciphering the papyrus.’
‘Where’s the papyrus now?’ Ben asked.
‘In London,’ Kirby said. ‘Locked away in a safe deposit box and, now Morgan’s dead, I’m the only person in the world who knows where.’
Ben frowned. ‘How do we know it’s genuine? How do we know that this Diodore really was Wenkaura?’
‘Because by way of a letterhead, he marked it with the personal seal that only he would have used, during his tenure as High Priest. It would have been unique to him, and very few people would ever have seen it. It instantly identifies him as Wenkaura. I’ll show you.’ Kirby took a pen from the breast pocket of his jacket, grabbed a stained beer mat from the table and hunched over it, scribbling something. He slid it over to Ben. In a blank corner of the beer mat was a small, distinctive circular logo, bearing an image of what looked like a temple in the centre. It was flanked by palm trees, and a crowned bird sat over the top of it.
Ben looked at it for a moment, then slid the beer mat back towards Kirby. ‘If this is so genuine, why aren’t Egyptologists the world over talking about it?’
Kirby let out a derisive snort. ‘Because our esteemed peers are a bunch of closed-minded arseholes. According to a panel of eminent professors, our research was speculative, unscholarly, nonsensical; and to resurrect the old myth of the heretic’s lost treasure would have done our careers about as much good as writing papers on astrology.’
‘Maybe they were right.’
Kirby took another slurp of Scotch. ‘Oh, yeah? These are the same kind of pricks who said Imhotep was a myth, until 1926 when a chance discovery proved them wrong and caused a lot of red faces. So Morgan and I thought, stuff ’em. They deserve to be humiliated. And they will be. I guarantee it.’
‘So you’re saying the letter indicates where the treasure is?’ Ben asked. ‘Simple as that?’
Kirby shook his head. ‘I’m afraid nothing’s ever that simple. Morgan and I reckoned that the old man was concerned it might be too easily intercepted en route. If he’d just given a location-X marks the spot-anyone could have found it. Wenkaura was cautious. And very smart. He’d seen the whole thing coming years before, and in the letter he tells how, before he’d fled Egypt, he’d devised a series of clues, sitting right under the noses of Akhenaten’s agents, that could point the way to where the vast bulk of the treasure was hidden.’ Kirby leaned back in his chair and smiled.
‘You know these clues?’
Kirby’s smile dropped. ‘Not quite. The way it works is that the first clue is in the papyrus. That leads you to a second clue, then the second leads to a third, and so on. All we had was a cryptic reference in Wenkaura’s letter, giving the specific location of the second clue.’
‘Which is what?’
‘The tomb of “He who is close to Re”,’ Kirby said.
‘That doesn’t sound very specific at all,’ Ben replied. ‘Since Re was one of their chief gods, I imagine quite a few people would have thought themselves close to him. You could be working your way through half the tombs in Egypt before finding anything.’
‘Exactly. And that’s what Morgan was working on in Cairo.’
‘And he found out what it meant?’
‘He found out something, that’s for sure.’ Kirby paused, sighed. ‘Problem is, I don’t know what. While he was out there I came home one day to find a phone message from him. He sounded all excited, saying he’d figured out the first clue, that it had led him to the second clue like clockwork, and he was going somewhere the next day that he was sure was going to offer up the next. I was supposed to call him back, but his phone was switched off. And that was the last time I ever heard from him. Next thing I knew, he was dead, and all his researc
h notes were stolen. If he got round to updating his notes, we’ll never know. They’re gone.’
‘Maybe not.’ Ben dug in his pocket, took out the little blue memory stick and laid it on the table. ‘Morgan’s notes, taken straight from his laptop.’
Kirby snatched it up. ‘How the hell did you get hold of this? On second thoughts, don’t tell me.’ He held the memory stick in front of him, gazing at it. ‘What I wouldn’t give to see what’s in here.’
‘You’re not the only one. The bad guys have it too.’
‘But they’d never get into it,’ Kirby smirked. ‘Not a chance in hell. The most fiendishly crack-proof encryption ever known. Morgan’s and my secret.’
‘We need computer access,’ Ben said. ‘We can’t go back to the house.’
‘But we could drive to my office.’
Ben looked at his watch. They’d been sitting in the pub for over an hour, and night had fallen. ‘Then let’s go. Right now.’
Chapter Forty
Back in St Andrews, Ben parked the Mercedes under the amber glow of a street lamp and followed Kirby to the iron gates of the Faculty of History building. They were locked.
‘It’s OK,’ Kirby said. ‘We all have a key, in case we need to come back to the office after hours.’ He unlocked a creaky side gate and they walked across the dark, empty car park to the entrance. Ben glanced up and down the street as Kirby opened the door. There was nobody around. Inside, Kirby was about to turn on the lights when Ben stopped his hand. ‘Keep the place dark,’ he said.
They climbed the stairs by the moonlight that shone from the windows, and Ben led the way through the shadowy corridor to Kirby’s room.
Ben drew down the blinds in the dark office as Kirby fired up the laptop on his desk and fumbled blindly to insert the memory stick. After a few moments the screen lit up, casting a bluish glow over his face in the darkness. ‘Hardware recognised. OK, here we go.’ He clicked the mouse, tapped a few keys. ‘Now for the password. Calypso Jennings.’
‘Calypso Jennings?’
Kirby glanced up. ‘She was a junior lecturer in ancient Greek, when Morgan and I were undergrads together at Durham. Hottest academic you’ve ever seen. We were both nuts about her. She seemed the obvious choice of password. Like I said, the most crack-proof encryption known to man.’
Ben watched as Kirby’s podgy fingers scuttled quickly over the keys, typing in the password. The file unlocked instantly, and they were in.
‘Here we go, the Akhenaten Project research file,’ Kirby said proudly. He held down a key and scrolled down through the document, text skimming across the screen faster than Ben could read it. ‘Nothing new here so far,’ Kirby muttered. ‘This is all stuff we already know.’ He took his finger off the key and an image froze on the screen. Ben peered at it. It looked like some ancient document, covered in old script that meant nothing to him.
‘This is a high-resolution scan of the Wenkaura papyrus,’ Kirby said. ‘You can see how aged some of the inscriptions are. We had a hell of a time deciphering it.’ He gazed at it for a moment longer, and went on scrolling down, staring hard at the screen.
Ben moved away from the desk, parted the blinds with his fingers and glanced cautiously out of the window. The street below was deserted.
Kirby clicked his tongue, shook his head. ‘All this stuff is exactly what I already have. There’s nothing new. What I want is to see if Morgan added anything at the bottom. That last entry could be—’
He broke off mid-sentence, craned his neck forward. ‘Oh, shit.’
‘What?’ Ben asked, stepping back to the desk.
‘I don’t fucking believe it.’
‘What?’
Kirby looked up from the screen. ‘Sahure,’ he breathed. ‘Sahure. Of course. What an idiot I was, not to get that.’
‘Sahure?’ Ben echoed.
‘So you didn’t learn about him in Bible class?’
‘Theology. And no, I didn’t.’
Kirby was giggling to himself, clenching his fist in triumph. ‘Morgan, you were a frigging genius.’
‘Are you going to explain this to me, or do I have to beat it out of you?’ Ben resisted the urge to grab Kirby’s throat and drag him across the desk.
Kirby stopped giggling, and looked serious. He tapped the screen. ‘Look here. The final entry, right at the bottom. Morgan worked it out. It’s the first clue.’ He smirked.
‘Explain.’
‘You remember that the clue was the tomb of “He who is close to Re”?’ Kirby said. ‘Well, get this. “He who is close to Re” is the literal meaning of the ancient Egyptian name, Sahure. And Sahure was the second ruler of Egypt’s Fifth Dynasty. He reigned from 2487 to 2475 BC and is buried at the pyramid complex at Abusir, just south of Cairo on the edge of the desert. Which means we know for sure that’s where Morgan found the second clue.’
‘Do we?’
Kirby’s eyes twinkled. ‘Absolutely.’ He prodded the screen enthusiastically. ‘And it gets even better two lines lower down. Morgan’s added to his notes that he also found out that Sahure was a distant ancestor of Wenkaura. And the High Priest Sanep, to whom the papyrus was intended to be delivered, would have known that about his former master. He would have picked up on the clue right away. See how perfect it is? There’s no doubt whatsoever that we’re on the right track.’
Ben nodded. ‘OK. It sounds plausible.’
‘Happy you met me?’
‘I can barely contain my joy.’
Kirby’s smirk widened into a grin. ‘What a team. The brain and the brawn. An intellectual genius and a soldier boy. We’re going to find the treasure in no time.’
Ben looked at him. ‘Hold on. Were going to find the treasure?’
Kirby nodded. ‘You and me. You don’t think I’m not coming along, do you?’
‘Not a chance,’ Ben said.
Kirby looked crestfallen. ‘Why?’
‘Lots of reasons. The main one being that it’s dangerous.’
‘Seems to me it’s pretty damned dangerous if I stay here,’ Kirby protested, flushing bright red. Apparently my life just went up in smoke. I can’t go home any more.’
‘So you want to team up with me.’
‘You’re a soldier. I’ve seen what you can do. You’re exactly the kind of person Morgan and I could have done with sooner. I need you, and you need me. It’s perfect.’
Ben shook his head. ‘I’m not going to nanny you all the way round Egypt. I’m going to do this my way. Alone.’
‘Really? Can you read hieroglyphics? Decipher clues that are thousands of years old? Because if you can, I’ll be impressed.’
Ben didn’t reply.
‘Here’s the bottom line,’ Kirby said. ‘If you want to find the heretic’s treasure, you bring me along. Let’s face it. Alone, you’ve got no chance.’
‘Say we find this thing together. I can’t let you have it. I told you, I need it.’
‘I’ll settle for academic stardom,’ Kirby said. ‘And maybe a trinket or two, so I can prove to my esteemed cretinous peers that they were dead wrong and Morgan and I were the superior scholars. That’s all I want. I’ll tell the boffins that the tomb robbers got there first. That’ll rub it in even more. Come on. You know it makes sense.’
‘What about your passport? We’re not going back to the house for your things.’
Kirby smiled. ‘No need for that. I keep all my important personal documents right here in my office.’ He jerked his thumb over his shoulder at a lockable steel filing cabinet behind the desk. ‘Including my passport. It’s the only place I wouldn’t lose them. That big old house just swallows things up.’
Ben was quiet for a long moment. Thirty seconds went by, then a full minute. Then he made a decision. ‘All right, Kirby. You can come with me to Egypt. We’ll head back south to Edinburgh and see if we can catch a late flight that’ll get us into Cairo by morning.’
‘Now you’re talking,’ Kirby said.
‘But when
we get there, you’ll do as I say. You’ll give me no trouble, won’t slow me down. I’m going to move hard and fast. One peep out of you, get under my feet just once, and you’ll be on the first plane back.’
Kirby beamed. ‘You won’t even know I’m there.’
Chapter Forty-One
Dawn was breaking over the Mediterranean as Ben reclined in the business-class armchair, sipped on an espresso and watched the sunrise from above the clouds. They’d been lucky to grab the last-minute seats on the night flight. It would be early morning in Cairo when they landed.
He felt weak with fatigue. His eyes were burning, his head was throbbing with worry and lack of sleep, and his heart palpitated every time he thought of Zara and what was happening to her. But he knew he had to keep moving forwards, stay alert and see this thing through to the end. He couldn’t even begin to contemplate what would happen if he failed.
At his left elbow, Kirby was awake, sitting with earphones on and watching the in-flight movie. Every so often his podgy hand would dip into the packet of potato crisps he was eating for breakfast, and he would jam a pile of them in his mouth and chew loudly.
Ben gazed back out of the window and took another sip of the hot coffee. He could only hope he was doing the right thing. He wondered again where Zara was, and how she was. He remembered their time together in Paris. Then his thoughts drifted off into darkness, and the nightmare image of the three severed heads of Valentine, Wolff and Harrison came flashing back to him. He thought for a long time about what he was going to do to Harry Paxton when this was over. So much had changed, so fast.
Finally his exhaustion caught up with him, and he gave in to sleep. His dreams were unsettled and frightening. He was roused from them by the sound of Kirby’s voice asking him something.
‘What?’ he said sleepily.
‘I said, how long were you a soldier?’
‘You woke me up to ask me that? Long enough.’
‘My dear departed father, the Laird, wanted me to join up. I wasn’t having any of it. I think that’s what Morgan and I had in common.’