Royan was also looking up at the sound, trying to pick out the shape of the aircraft against the dark clouds. Her face was flushed from the run, the tendrils of sweat-damp hair dangled down her cheeks. ‘If those swine are allowed to enter our tomb it will be a dreadful desecration of a sacred place,’ she said angrily.
Suddenly Nicholas reached across the litter and took her arm. His expression was stern and determined. ‘You are right. Go on down to the monastery with Tessay. I will follow you later.’ Before she could protest or question him, he strode across to Sapper.
‘I am putting the two women in your care, Sapper. Look after them.’
‘Where are you going, Nicky?’ Royan had come up behind him, and overheard his orders to Sapper. ‘What are you going to do?’
‘One little chore. Won’t take me long.’
‘You aren’t going back there?’ She was horrified. ‘You will get yourself killed or worse. You saw what Helm did to Tessay—’
‘Don’t fuss yourself, my love,’ he laughed, and before she realized what he intended he kissed her full on the lips. While she was still flustered and confused by this display in front of so many men, he pushed her gently away.
‘Take care of Tessay. I will meet you at the boats.’
Before she could protest further, he turned and struck out up the valley at a long-legged lope which carried him over the rough terrain so swiftly that she had no further chance to prevent him.
‘Nicky!’ she screamed after him despairingly, but he pretended not to hear and kept going, following the diverted river upstream, back towards the dam.
The Jet Ranger followed the convoluted course of the river below the dam. At moments they could look directly down into the narrow gap between the high cliffs, into the shaded depths of the chasm, almost dry now, with only the occasional gleam of the shrunken and still pools.
‘There they are!’ Helm pointed dead ahead. There was a small cluster of men on the brink of the chasm.
‘Make sure they aren’t shufta!’ There was fear in von Schiller’s voice.
‘No!’ Helm reassured him loudly. ‘I recognize Nogo, and that tall one beside him in the white shamma is the monk Hansith Sherif, our informer.’ He shouted above the engine beat at the pilot, ‘You can go in and land. There! Nogo is waving you in!’
The moment the skids of the helicopter touched the ground, both Nogo and Hansith ran forward. Between them they helped von Schiller down from the passenger cabin and hustled him clear of the spinning rotors.
‘My men have secured the area,’ Nogo assured him. ‘We have driven the shufta down the valley towards the river. This man is Hansith Sherif, who has been working beside Harper in the tomb. He knows every inch of the tunnels.’
‘Does he speak English?’ Von Schiller looked up at the tall monk eagerly.
‘A little bit,’ Hansith answered for himself.
‘Good! Good!’ Von Schiller beamed at him. ‘Show me the way. I will follow you. Come on, Guddabi, it’s about time you did some work for the money I am paying you.’
Hansith led them quickly to the head of the scaffolding, where von Schiller paused and looked down nervously into the gloomy depths of the chasm. The bamboo framework seemed flimsy and rickety, the drop deep and terrifying. Von Schiller was on the point of protesting when Nahoot Guddabi whimpered behind him.
‘He does not expect us to climb down there, does he?’
His terror bolstered von Schiller immediately, and he turned on Nahoot with relish. ‘It is the only access to the tomb. Follow the man down. I will be close behind you.’
When Nahoot still hesitated, Helm put a calloused hand in the small of his back and shoved him forward.
‘Get on with it. You are wasting time.’
Reluctantly Nahoot started down the scaffolding after the monk, and von Schiller followed him. The framework of bamboo shook and swayed under their combined weight and the drop to the rocks below sucked at them, but at last they reached the ledge beside Taita’s pool. There they stood in a small group, staring about them in awe and wonder.
‘Where is the tunnel?’ von Schiller demanded as soon as he had regained his breath, and Hansith beckoned to him to follow him to the wall of the small coffer dam.
Here von Schiller paused and looked around at Helm and Nogo. ‘I want you to remain on guard here. I will enter the tomb with Guddabi and this monk. I will send for you when you are needed.’
‘I would feel happier to be with you, to protect you, Herr von Schiller—’ Helm began, but the old man frowned at him.
‘Do as I tell you!’ And with Hansith steadying him he climbed stiffly down the wall of the coffer dam into the mouth of the tunnel. Nahoot Guddabi followed him closely.
‘The lights? Where does the power come from?’ von Schiller wanted to know.
‘There is a machine,’ Hansith explained, and at that moment they heard the soft burble of the generator ahead of them. None of them spoke again as they moved down the entrance tunnel after Hansith, until they reached the bridge over the dark waters of the sink-hole.
‘This is very rough construction,’ Nahoot muttered, his uneasiness at last giving way to professional interest. ‘It does not remind me of any other Egyptian tomb I have ever inspected. I think we may have been misled. It is probably some native Ethiopian workings.’
‘You are making a premature judgement,’ von Schiller admonished him. ‘Wait until we have seen the rest of what this man has to show us.’
Von Schiller steadied himself with a hand on Hansith’s shoulder as they crossed the bobbing pontoons of baobab wood, and he scrambled ashore on the far side with relief. They started up the rising section of the tunnel and passed the high-water mark.
As soon as the construction of the walls changed to packed and dressed stone, Nahoot remarked on it. ‘Ah! I was disappointed at first. I thought we had been duped, but now one can see the Egyptian influence.’
They reached the landing outside the ruined gallery on which stood the Honda generator. By now both von Schiller and Nahoot were sweating with exertion and trembling with excitement.
‘This looks more and more promising. It may very well be a royal tomb,’ Nahoot exulted. Von Schiller pointed to the plaster seals stacked against the side wall where Nicholas and Royan had abandoned them. Nahoot fell to his knees beside them and examined them eagerly, his voice trembling as he cried out.
‘The cartouche of Mamose, and the seal of the scribe Taita!’ He looked up at von Schiller with shining eyes, ‘There can be no doubts now. I have led you to the tomb as I promised you I would.’
For a moment von Schiller stared at him, speechless in the face of such bare-faced arrogance. Then he snorted with disgust and stooped to peer through the open doorway into the long gallery.
‘This has been destroyed!’ he cried in horror. ‘The tomb has been annihilated.’
‘No, no!’ Hansith assured him. ‘Come this way. There is another tunnel beyond.’
As they picked their way through the rubble and wreckage, Hansith told them in halting, broken English how the roof of the gallery had collapsed, and how he, Hansith, had found the true entrance under the ruins.
Nahoot stopped every few paces to examine and exclaim over the scraps of painted plaster that had survived the fall of the roof. ‘These must have been magnificent. Classical work of the highest order—’
‘There is more to show you. Much more,’ Hansith promised them, and von Schiller snarled at Nahoot.
‘Leave these damaged sections now. Time is running out on us. We must hurry on directly to the burial chamber.’
Hansith led them up the hidden staircase into the maze of the bao, and then through the twists and turns to the lowest level.
‘How did Harper and the woman ever find their way through this?’ von Schiller marvelled. ‘It’s a rabbit warren.’
‘Another concealed staircase!’ Nahoot was amazed, and stuttered with excitement as they descended into the gas trap where the ranks
of amphorae had stood undisturbed for thousands of years, and then climbed the last flight of stairs to the beginning of the funeral arcade.
Now both of them were stunned by the splendour of the murals and the majesty of the great god images that guarded the length of the arcade. They stood side by side unable to move, frozen with awe as they gazed about them.
‘I never expected anything like this,’ von Schiller whispered. ‘This exceeds anything that I ever hoped for.’
‘The rooms on each side are filled with treasures.’ Hansith pointed down the arcade. ‘There are such things as you have never dreamed. Harper was able to take very little with him – a few small boxes. He has left piles of goods, stacks of chests.’
‘Where is the coffin? Where is the body that was in the tomb?’ von Schiller demanded.
‘Harper has given the body, in its golden coffin, to the abbot. They have taken it away to the monastery.’
‘Nogo will soon fetch it back for us. You need not worry about that, Herr von Schiller,’ Nahoot assured him.
As though the spell that held them was shattered by this promise, they started forward together, slowly at first, and then both of them began to run. Von Schiller tottered into the nearest store room on his old, stiff legs, and giggled like a child on Christmas morning as he gazed upon the piled treasures. ‘Incredible!’
He dragged down one of the cedarwood chests from the nearest stack, and ripped off the lid with trembling fingers. When he saw the contents he was struck speechless. He knelt over the chest and began to weep softly with emotion too overwhelming to express in words.
Nicholas was banking on the fact that Nogo’s men would be driving along the cliff tops to reach Taita’s pool, and that he would have a free run up the course of the diverted stream to the dam site. He took no precautions against running into them, other than to pause every few minutes to listen and peer ahead. He knew that he had little time left to him. He could not expect the rest of the party to wait for him at the boats and endanger themselves for this whimsy of his.
Twice he heard automatic gunfire in the distance, coming from the direction of the chasm, down towards the pool. However, the chance he took paid off, and he reached the dam site without running into any of Nogo’s forces. He did not, however, push his luck too far. Before approaching the dam openly, he climbed the hillside above it and surveyed the area. It gave him time to recover from the hard run up the valley, and to check that Nogo had not left men to guard the dam, although he considered this unlikely.
He could see that the yellow front-loader tractor was still parked on the bank high above the wall where Sapper had left it. He could also see no sign of any human presence, no armed Ethiopian army guards. He grunted with relief and wiped the sweat out of his eyes with his shirtsleeve.
Even with his naked eye he could see that the water was lapping the top of the wall and squirting through the gaps and chinks between the gabions. Yet from where he stood the wall still seemed to be holding well, and it would need another foot rise in the level of the backed-up river to overturn it.
‘Well done, Sapper,’ he thought, grinning. ‘You did a hell of a job.’
Nicholas studied the level of the river and the condition of the waters that were being held back by the wall. The flow down from the mountains was much stronger than when he had last been here. The river bed was brimming from bank to bank, and some of the trees and bushes at the edge were already partially submerged, bowing and nodding as the swift current tugged at them. The flood was a sullen grey colour, fast and hostile, swirling into the pond of the dam before finding the outlet into the side channel and tearing down it, growling like a wild animal released from its cage, brimming into spume and white water as it felt the sharp fall into the valley.
Next he looked towards the escarpment of the gorge. It was blotted out by banks of dark, menacing cloud that obscured the northern horizon. At that moment a squall of wind swept over him, cold with the threat of rain. He needed no further urging and started down the slope towards the dam, slipping and sliding in his haste. Before he reached the bottom, the squall of wind had turned to cold rain. It flung needles into his face and plastered his shirt to his body.
He reached the tractor and scrambled up into the driver’s seat. There was a moment of panic when he thought that Sapper might have removed the key from its hiding-place under the seat. He scrabbled for it for a few seconds until his fingers closed over it, and then let out a sigh of relief.
‘Sapper, for a moment there you were very close to death. I would have broken your neck with my own hands.’
He thrust the key into the ignition lock and turned it to the pre-heat position, waiting for the coil light on the dashboard to turn from red to green.
‘Come on!’ he muttered impatiently. Those few seconds of delay seemed like a lifetime. Then the green light flashed and he twisted the key to start.
The engine fired at the first turn and Nicholas hooted, ‘Full marks, Sapper. All is forgiven.’
He gave the machine time to warm up to optimum operating temperature, slitting his eyes against the rain as he waited and looking around at the hills above him, fearful that the sound of the engine might bring Nogo’s gorillas swarming down on him. However, there was no sign of life on the rainswept heights.
He eased the tractor into her lowest gear and turned her down the bank. Below the dam wall the water that was finding its way through the gaps was less than hub-deep. The tractor bounced and ground its way through the boulder-strewn watercourse. Nicholas stopped the machine in the middle of the river bed while he studied the downstream face of the dam wall for its weakest section. Then he lined up below the centre of the wall, at the point where Sapper had shored up the raft of logs with rows of gabions.
‘Sorry for all your hard work,’ he apologized to Sapper, as he manoeuvred the steel scoop of the tractor to the right height and angle before attacking the wall. He worried the gabion he had selected out of its niche in the row, reversing and thrusting at it until he could get the scoop under it and drag it free. He pulled away and dropped the heavy wire mesh basket over the waterfall, then drove back and renewed the attack.
It was slow work. The pressure of the water had wedged in the gabions, keying them into the wall so it took almost ten minutes to free the second basket. As he dropped that one over the waterfall, he glanced for the first time at the fuel gauge on the dashboard of the tractor and his heart sank. It was registering empty. Sapper must have neglected to refuel it: either he had exhausted the fuel supply or he had not expected ever to use the machine again when he abandoned it.
Even as Nicholas thought about it the engine stuttered as it starved. He reversed it sharply, changing the angle of inclination so that the remaining fuel in the tank could slosh forward. The engine caught and cleared, running smoothly and strongly once again. Quickly he changed gear and ran back at the wall.
‘No more time for finesse,’ he told himself grimly. ‘From here on in it’s brute force and muscle.’
By removing two of the gabions he had exposed a corner of the log raft behind them. This was the vulnerable part of the wall. He worked the hydraulic controls and lifted the scoop to its highest travel. Then he lowered it carefully, an inch at a time, until it hooked over the end of the thickest log in the jam. He locked the hydraulics and thrust the tractor into reverse, gradually pouring on full power until the engine was roaring and blowing out a cloud of thick blue diesel smoke.
Nothing gave. The log was jammed solidly and the wall was held together by the keying of the gabions into each other and the enormous pressure of water behind them. Despairingly, Nicholas kept the throttle wide open. The lugged tyres spun and skidded on the boulders under them, throwing a tall shower of spray high into the air and churning out loose rock and gravel.
‘Come on!’ Nicholas pleaded with the machine. ‘Come on! You can do it.’
The engine beat faltered again as she starved for fuel. She spluttered and coughed, and almo
st stalled.
‘Please!’ Nicholas begged her aloud. ‘One more try.’
Almost as if it had heard him, the engine fired again, ran unevenly for a few moments, and then abruptly bellowed at full power again.
‘That’s it, my beauty,’ Nicholas yelled, as it lurched and hammered against the wall.
With a sound like a cannon shot the log snapped and the top end of it flew out of the wall, leaving a long, deep hole through which the river poured triumphantly, a thick, solid column of dirty grey water.
‘Thar she blows!’ Nicholas shouted, jumping down from the driver’s seat. He knew there was not enough time left for him to drive the tractor out of the river bed. He could move more quickly on his own feet.
The current seized his legs, trying to pull them out from under him. It was like one of those childhood nightmares when monsters were pursuing him and, despite his every effort, his legs would only move in slow motion. He glanced back over his shoulder, and at that instant he saw the central section of the dam wall burst, blowing outward in a violent eruption of furious waters. He struggled on another few paces towards the bank before the deep and turbulent tide picked him up. He was helpless in its grip. It swept him away, over the waterfall and down, down into the hungry maw of the chasm.
‘These are the royal crook and sceptre of the Pharaoh,’ cried von Schiller in a voice that was gusty and faint with emotion as he lifted them out of the cedarwood chest.
‘And this is his false beard and his ceremonial pectoral emblem.’ Nahoot knelt beside him on the floor of the tomb under the great statue of Osiris. All the ill feelings between them were forgotten in the wonder of the moment as they examined the fabulous treasures of Egypt.
‘This is the greatest archaeological discovery of all time,’ von Schiller whispered, his voice tremulous. He pulled his handkerchief from his pocket and dabbed at the perspiration of excitement that trickled down his cheeks.