Читать книгу The Golden Mask of King Tut The Code - Jesús Ariel Aguirre - Страница 19

This old Castle of the famous Sultan, next to where Mohamed Ali built the Alabaster Mosque, so beautiful. That medieval fortification is now full of the military and the secret service looking for the stolen piece.

From on high Salah El-din controlled a vast territory and is now the headquarters of Egyptian intelligence.

Rooms with powerful computers and wiretaps all over Cairo discover some dark details of the robbery.

The news could not be made known, the most valuable piece of the Museum was gone, and its visitors would no longer have the same illusion to come to it. So everything remained a strict national secret. And since the Museum had to close, no explanations were necessary.

But how was it possible to violate the security of the Museum? They begin to check the cameras that control the museum.

It happened that in the month of March 2020, a very contagious family of SARS and MERS viruses that humanity had already known before, transmitted from animals to man, originated in a Chinese city, Whuan and quickly spread around the world as lightning, through airplanes, reached Italy, Germany, Spain and Great Britain and the American continent, unleashing like a world pandemic.

While it was being disinfected, the men entered with a mask and white protective suits, no one could enter the museum, only the health workers to sanitize the place. But after they left and several hours in silence, when the museum keepers reopened their doors, people crowded to enter, and were amazed at the giant statues in the main room of the museum, of Pharaoh Amenophis III and Queen Tiye, parents of Akhenaten. But when we reached the second floor in the room that houses the jewel of the museum the Water of the Child King Tut, the glass box was empty.

Egypt has been militarized since the last revolution in 2011, and it is almost impossible to reduce the gold piece through the only international airport, Cairo, the port of Alexandria is too far to pass all the controls imposed, so a military proposes which ones could be the channels of escape for modern grave robbers.

After much investigation, the intelligence discovers in the museum’s security cameras how they entered it and they discover that through an old tunnel that passes under the Museum and reaches the Nile itself, where through a typical Falukas, a not very sophisticated boat They would have left with the mask of death to an unknown destination.

The intelligence takes the intercepted audios of a Catholic Cardinal in the Coptic Quarter, his name Angelo Boticelli and recently he has made some unusual visits, this high-ranking religious, they only know that he is almost a diplomat from the Vatican. The eavesdropping leads the clues to potential buyers of the black market of antiquities; T homas recalls that recently the ex-consul and the nephew of Butros Galli were accused of illegal trafficking of archaeological pieces from Egypt to Italy in 2018. At that time it was issued an arrest warrant against them and against the Italian citizen Ladislav Otakar Skakal and Interpol also issued a red alert, after confirming that more than 21,000 artifacts from different times were found in a container of goods with diplomatic protection. Obviously Egyptian citizens were also involved in the transport. The honorary consul, who was in charge until 2014. Among the Egyptian citizens involved was the nephew of the late former UN Secretary-General and brother of a former Egyptian Finansas minister accused of corruption.

The case dates back to 2018, when the Salerno customs authorities found the artifacts inside a container and notified the two countries. Italy shortly after handed over the seized pieces to the Egyptian authorities, after the Attorney General’s Office so requested, after purchasing the illegal way in which they had arrived, under diplomatic cover.

Egypt tries to prevent the smuggling of antiquities from the country and makes great diplomatic efforts to recover the stolen pieces, which are in proven collections around the world and even in museums.

Thomas emphatically remembers the battle that Cairo has waged, for years, to recover the bust of Queen Nefertiti, kept in the Neues Museum in Berlin.

Jamil Fahmi, an Egyptian intelligence security expert, detects several identifiable international calls, deducing that they are interested in keeping the unique piece. Among them are an Arab Sheikh from the Emirates , an Indian magnate, a billionaire from South Africa who owns a diamond jewelry store, one from Southeast Asia who lives in the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur Malaysia who owns one of the most important technology factories and computers in the world and the main investor in Malaysian oil. Others , a Russian oil magnate who lives in Moscow , Roman Abramovich the owner of the Chels e a Britanico football team and main owner for his participation in the Gazprom Neft Oil Company, the Russian steel through the Russian Aluminum and the commercial airlines Aeroflot Russian Airlines. Finally a Russian investor businessman who resides in Monte Carlo , the very Dmitri Yevquenievich Rybolovle president of AS Monaco who despite being a philanthropist with his charitable works in his country, has the reputation of being a select collector, who had in his hands as He owned the painting “Salvator Mundi” by Da Vinci and would now be behind the mask of the boy king.

The black market is in full swing, says Anne, but where will I be auctioned? It is not known, says Jamil, possibly Casablanca in Morocco, a luxurious Hotel in Abu Dhabi and or the modern center of Singapore in Asia, are on the list of possible places, according to the information they already handle.

Jamil Fahmi quickly displayed his Esglobal map of Africa, on a screen with a blue background, highlighting the map in black and the routes that link the continent in orange.

The trans-African highway network comprises nine high-capacity corridors that link the continent from north to south and from east to west along almost 60,000 kilometers. Some sections are not yet fully finished; it was designed in the 70s by the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA).

The Trans-African route: TH1 connects Cairo with Dakar (8,636 km), TH5 (Dakar –Yamena (4,496 km) known as the Transhelian highway. TH6 (Yamela-Djibouti (4,219 km). TH7 (Dakar –Lagos (4,010 km). TH8 (Lagos-Mombasa (6,259 km). TH9 (Beira-Lobito (3,523 km). TH2 (Algiers Algeria - Lagos Nigeria (4,504 km.) Known as the Trans-Saharan Highway. TH3 (Tripoli- Cape Town (10,808 km) and TH4 unites Cape Town (Cape Town with Cairo 10,228 km.)

The project included four cross sections: 9,610 kilometers from Tripoli to Cape Town, 8,860 from Cairo to South Africa, 8,636 from the Egyptian capital to Dakar and 6,260 between Lagos and Mombassa.

To these must be added the regional corridors, such as the links between Algeria and Nigeria, Chad and Djibouti, Angola and Mozambique or Senegal and Nigeria.

The research studies the routes that link Cairo with the rest of Africa, the TH4 and TH1 would be the routes to be closed to prevent the Mask from leaving the country by land.

The main suspicion is that, discarding the Cairo airport for its security and the port of Alexandria, due to its distance, there would be a caravan of camels through the desert towards Libya, but the eavesdropping on several telephone numbers also leads to a cruise ship that travel the Nile from North to South, from Luxor to Aswan, I could take the stolen piece without any suspicion, and from there to Sudan, to let the matter cool down and be able to take it from there through the Red Sea to the place of delivery in Asia.

Anne sees the list of cruises, including Nubiem Sea, Prince Abass, Omar El Khayam, Eugenie, Kasr Ibrim or the Nile Bride, Royal Ruby, the Radamisy Semeramis, Liberty, Princes Sara, Esmeralda, Alyssa. The list is extensive.

But Cairo also leaves another highway that goes towards the Sinai Peninsula. The connection with Amman in Jordan is easy; the Red Sea has innumerable small ports that could be used, such as the tourist of Hurghada.

Interpol provides the information about the mask that would have already been sold to a Powerful Sheikh of the Arab world, it proposes to look for it to the powerful Sheikh, in a Holy Mosque when he approaches for his prayers (Jamil says that something unlikely that an Arab is involved, but they do not rule out any hypotheses in the search), so they set out to hunt for mosques around the Muslim world .

They will start with the Sahaba Mosque in Sharm el-Sheik.

Others will follow the trail of tycoons around the world.

They also postulate the idea that some museum in the world might want the piece, but legally it is impossible, says Thomas.

Anne, get out your tablet and quickly inspect the more than 50 museums in the world that contain Ancient Egyptian Art.

Among them the British Museum, in London, The Louvre Museum in Paris, The Neues Museum in Berlin, Milan Egyptian Collection Sforzesco Castle in Italy, together with the Egyptian Museum in Turin and the Gregorian Museum of the Varican and the National Archaeological Museum of Naples. . The Metropolitan Museum of New York (MET). The National Archaeological Museum of Madrid. The list is very long, but could a museum buy a stolen piece? Anne wonders.