Читать книгу Eternal Journey - Alex Archer - Страница 13

Jon looked as if he wasn’t quite old enough to drive, but he was a second-year graduate student in anthropology with an emphasis in archaeology. His round baby face and mass of curly red hair hid some of his years, as did the fact he’d made no attempt to move out of his parents’ house and didn’t care that all his friends knew it. He sat cross-legged on a small rug he’d brought with him—a futile effort to keep the dirt off his pants—and he stared at a slab of stone he’d just brushed off.

The first image in the upper left corner was of a cane crooked to the right, with a tilted square sitting halfway up from its base. Next to it were four circles stacked on top of each other, like a snowman without features, and a legless creature that looked like a cross between a walrus and a dog. There was also a setting sun, a cow-headed man holding an ankh, a three-legged owl, parallel wavy lines, stiff-looking birds, a narrow pyramid and a heavily lashed eye. The symbols were at the same time crude and elegant, and he tentatively touched the walrus-dog.

“Amazing,” he breathed. “Thousands of years old. This is just glorious.”

The images had been weathered by the salty sea air and the dirt that had shifted above them for centuries. Still, there wasn’t a single figure that couldn’t be made out. Translating them was another matter.

“Hey, Jon-Jon. No one at the uni could make much of that last piece you dug up.” This came from Cindy, a classmate whose sun-leathered face made her look quite a bit older than her twenty-four years. She leaned over Jon’s back to get a better look at the slab, hands on his shoulders and breasts grazing the top of his head. Unlike Jon, she’d made no attempt to keep the dirt off her clothes, which had been eggshell-white when she started the day’s work.

“None of the profs at the uni could figure out any story from it,” she continued. “But they were using newer translation texts.” She pushed off Jon and came around to squat in front of him, the slab between them.

Despite the cooling weather, she’d worn shorts. Jon stared at her knees.

“Doc figured it out, though,” Cindy said. “The only prof who could. He showed me his notes this morning. They’re on the clipboard over by the cooler if you want to take a look.”

Jon dropped his gaze to the slab. “I want to finish here first.”

The wind gusted and Cindy made a brrring sound. Jon looked at her knees again and noted the goose bumps.

“I’ll tell you what his notes say, then.” She let a pause settle between them, to let Jon know that what she was about to say was important. “Doc used the old translation guides on the slabs, says they talk about an expedition looking for yellow metal. That would be gold. Says they were also looking for a new world to explore. Says an oracle of Hathor directed them to come this way. Who cares about an oracle’s vision. Think about it…gold!”

Jon looked her in the face now. Cindy was pretty, definitely, and with plenty of curves. But there were creases around her eyes and at the corners of her lips…too much time spent suntanning, and the pale blond color she chose to dye her hair was unflattering and brittle looking.

“Yeah, gold,” he said. “I know. The Egyptians used gold on some of their sarcophaguses.”

She licked her lips. “So anyway, Doc says your slab goes on to say that while the Egyptians were exploring around here, their leader was bitten by a poisonous snake and died. Prof thinks maybe there’s a tomb around here somewhere, and that maybe it’s on this side of the ridge. Maybe somewhere down through the crevice.”

“So it’d be our find,” Jon said, suddenly very interested. “The uni’s, I mean. Not Dr. Michaels and his team over yonder.” He scratched at his skin. “It’d be a kick if the uni found a tomb, while Dr. Michaels and his so-called professional team picked the wrong spot to dig.”

She smiled, the invisible braces on her teeth showing. “Doc wants us to keep quiet about it. Not to traipse over the hill and breathe a word to Dr. Michaels. Not to—”

“I could write my thesis on—”

Cindy made a growling sound. “I don’t care who gets credit for what, Jon, or if the uni makes headlines. I don’t give a rat’s ass about your thesis.”

Jon cocked his head.

“Don’t you get it?” She dropped her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “Gold. If the Egyptians were looking for gold…and found it…well, it’s probably buried in the tomb.”

Jon groaned. Just when it looked as if Cindy was taking archaeology seriously her magpie complex kicked in.

“Gold, treasure. Maybe some pretty little pieces don’t have to be cataloged. Know what I mean? Maybe I might just get compensated, and then some, for all the clothes and shoes I’ve ruined on this blasted project. ’Sides, we both know I’m not going to get an A out of this. I’ll be lucky if I pass. I figure I might as well get something.” Like gold, she mouthed.

Jon watched her sashay away, hips swinging more than they needed to. He groaned again. How did she ever make it this far at the university? There were twelve graduate students assigned to this dig. Next semester it would be a different twelve. A part of him hoped it would be next semester’s batch that uncovered the tomb; he didn’t want to deal with Cindy’s sticky fingers.

“I should report you,” Jon muttered. “I should tell.” But that would be juvenile, he decided. He returned his attention to the slab, then pulled a notebook out of his pocket and fluttered the pages to knock the dirt out. He thumbed through his scrawl about this particular site.

Originally it had been heavily overgrown with vegetation and rock. The soil line had been higher. It was considered a tertiary site, compared to the larger site Dr. Michaels’s professional crew was digging just over the rise. There’d been previous excavation attempts at the very spot where Jon sat, but nothing much had come of it—not even when a philanthropist had brought in expensive laser scanning equipment. That was why the university in Sydney had been given the go-ahead to send their graduate students to this place. There were some interesting pieces, but nothing spectacular was expected to be found. It was just a place to train would-be archaeologists.

To Jon’s knowledge, this was the first time the university had been involved in something considered a fringe project. Even some of the professors scoffed at the notion of Egyptians on Australian soil. But Jon knew it was more than likely Egyptians actually had come here—beyond the evidence that was directly in front of him.

Australia appeared on a Greek map dated earlier than 200 years B.C., and Sumerian and Mayan writings referenced a lost land in the Pacific. Then, more than twenty years ago archaeologists in Fayum, Egypt, discovered fossils of kangaroos. And eighty years ago things looking suspiciously like boomerangs were found in Tutankhamen’s tomb.

So ancient peoples from far away, worlds away, knew about Australia, and in Jon’s view certainly had been here…even before the aborigines.

Especially the Egyptians.

“Fringe nothing,” Jon grumbled. “This is all fair dinkum. And screw the gold. Hello award-winning thesis and a free ride in some doctorate program.” Maybe Dr. Michaels across the ridge would beg him to join that team. “Indiana Jones, eat your ever loving heart out.”

A “harrumph” startled Jon and made him bolt upright to his feet.

“Doc, sorry. Didn’t hear you.”

Jon knew their project head detested the Indiana Jones films.

“Cindy said she told you about my translations.”

“Um, yeah.” Jon was always nervous around instructors.

“Walk with me,” the professor said.

“Sure.”

Doc was a small man, at little more than five feet and slender. Most of the students dwarfed him. He was a tidy man, somehow staying clean despite sifting and digging alongside his charges. Jon admired him because Doc didn’t ask the students to do anything he wouldn’t do himself.

He was always in a broad-brimmed hat to shield his face from the sun. He had several in his jeep, and was wearing an olive-green one today with a tie that disappeared into his thick black beard. Jon guessed that Doc dyed the beard since the short and always neatly combed hair on his head was a mix of gray and black.

Doc rubbed his hands together as they walked and pursed his lips in a pensive expression. He mumbled about seeking more funding from the university, perhaps in the form of grants; the words were meant for himself, and Jon politely pretended not to listen.

Their course took them past the students around the sifting table and beyond the tents where they passed the nights. They came to a rock cleft, where a piece of split sandstone had formed a crevice. Spikes held a rope ladder that led down into it. The crevice couldn’t be seen from a distance. Because of the sandstone and the shadows that extended from the ridge, you almost had to be on top of it to notice.

Jon hoped he was being given permission to climb down. Doc was careful about the university’s liability, and only allowed students down there under careful supervision. There were more hieroglyphics down there. A lot more.

“Tomorrow,” Doc told him. “You and I and Cindy…”

Jon made a face.

“You and I and Matthew will go down and take many more photographs, bring some things up. There’s important work to do.”

“We could go down now.” Jon couldn’t keep the excitement out of his voice.

“Tomorrow, when we’ve a full day of it.” Doc’s voice was kind but stern. “I’ve got some lights coming in the morning that will make it much easier to see. I need the light to better translate.”

Jon anxiously shifted back and forth on the balls of his feet. “I just knew you’d be able to translate that first tablet. And the one I’m still cleaning. You’ll read that one, too.”

Doc nodded. “These hieroglyphics,” he began. He tipped his head up and inhaled the cool fall air, and his gaze followed a noisy flock of birds heading west, farther into the forest preserve. “They are very ancient, archaic, from the early dynasties. Most Egyptologists would not be able to translate them, Jon. They’re all schooled to read what’s called Middle Egyptian. Very few—myself one of them—can read the formative styles.”

“Because these hieroglyphics look a little like Phoenician and Sumerian,” Jon supplied, puffing out his chest a little.

Doc nodded. “And that’s one of the reasons not everyone thinks these hieroglyphics are Egyptian.”

“So much the fools, them,” Jon said.

“Fools indeed,” Doc agreed.

“Think I’m gonna dux this class, Doc?” Jon cringed, realizing he shouldn’t be asking something like this so soon in the session.

Doc crossed his arms and placed his hands on his elbows. He didn’t answer.

“Presumptuous of me, huh?” Jon rocked back on his heels and shook his head. “Sorry.”

“You’ll dux this class,” Doc said after a moment. “We both know you’re my best student.”

Jon’s eyes gleamed and he opened his mouth to say something else, but stopped when he heard a muffled chirping sound. Doc disentangled his arms and reached into the deep pocket of his jacket. He retrieved a satellite phone and thumbed a button.

“If you’ll excuse me, Jon.” Doc continued walking.

I’m gonna ace this, Jon thought. He happily headed back to clean his slab.

DOC WAITED until he was well out of earshot of any of the students, then he held the phone to his ear.

“This must be important.” He paused and swallowed hard. “Had better be important to bother me here while I am with the students.” He cocked his head and listened intently. Then he dropped his voice. “Annja Creed? The American? You have her, yes?”

He scowled, all the lines of his face drawing together so that his expression looked pinched and pained.

The voice on the other end came through. “She escaped us, but we killed her cameraman. He put up little fight, and no one will find his body.”

“Go on,” Doc said.

“We have his cameras and his computer. They’re on the way to your office now.”

The lines on his face deepened.

“I put them in a packing crate, just as you told me, labeled it so anyone looking will think it’s filled with books.”

“What else?”

“The rest of the television people, they left before we got to the hotel.”

Doc clicked his tongue against his teeth, waiting for the speaker to finish.

“Likely they are of no consequence. It was the cameraman and Annja Creed. They’re the only ones who saw.”

“And you let her get away.”

A hiss of static came across the phone.

“Yes, she got away. Sir…Master. She had a sword. She killed Zuka and Sute and—”

“Where is Annja Creed now?”

There was another hiss of static.

“Where, I say?”

“Master, she got on a bus. I could not read the words. I do not know its destination. The police came to the hotel, and we had to leave. We could not take the bodies with us, Zuka and Sute and…”

Doc held the phone away from him and stared at it, the shadow cast by the big brim of his hat obscuring the buttons. Finally, he brought it back to his ear.

“I suggest you find her or you may also be among the casualties.” He ended the connection and replaced the phone in his pocket, stood quietly and stared at the rise that separated the two digs. After several minutes he turned and retraced his steps, stopping at the slab Jon still busily and carefully cleaned.

“You can translate this, right?” Jon didn’t look up; he fixed his gaze on Doc’s shoes.

“Of course,” Doc returned. “Let me read it to you.”