The Cult of Osiris nwaec-5

  The Cult of Osiris

  ( Nina Wilde and Eddie Chase - 5 )

  Andy Mcdermott

  In Andy McDermott's brilliant new novel, Nina Wilde and Eddie Chase are on the hunt for the lost pyramid of Osiris... The incredible secret of the Great Sphinx of Egypt is about to be revealed. An archaeological dig is preparing to open the Hall of Records, a repository of ancient knowledge hidden beneath the enigmatic statue. But on the night of the unveiling student Macy Sharif makes a shocking discovery: a religious cult already raiding the Hall of Records to find the location of the mythical Pyramid of Osiris. Framed by corrupt officials, she goes on the run, trying to reach the only people who can save her before she is silenced - permanently. Discredited, jobless and broke, archaeologist Nina Wilde and ex-SAS soldier Eddie Chase have problems of their own - until Macy's plea for help sends them on a deadly quest across the globe as they try to reach the mysterious pyramid before Khalid Osir, the charismatic leader of the Osirian Temple. But is the cult's motive purely greed... or something more sinister?

  The Cult of Osiris

  ANDY MCDERMOTT

  Copyright © 2009 Andy McDermott

  For my family and friends

  Prologue

  Giza, Egypt

  The time-weathered face of the Great Sphinx regarded Macy Sharif impassively as she paced before its huge stone paws. She didn’t give the ancient monument so much as a glance in return; in the two weeks she had been here, the Sphinx and the pyramids beyond had gone from awe-inspiring wonders to mere backdrops for a job that had fallen far short of her hopes. In the first week she had taken hundreds of digital photos and video clips, but now her camera was just a weight in one thigh pocket, untouched for days.

  How had Egypt, of all places, turned into such a crushing disappointment? From an early age, she’d been entranced by her grandfather’s stories of the land of his birth; tales of kings and queens and good and evil in a land of wonders, better than any fairy tale because they also happened to be true. It was an exotic, romantic world, as different from Miami’s wealthy Key Biscayne as Macy could imagine, and even as a child she’d been determined that one day she would experience it for herself.

  But the reality had not lived up to the dream.

  She stopped pacing, checking the shelters beside the Sphinx’s right paw. Still no sign of Berkeley.

  A glance at her watch: approaching eight fifteen p.m. The expedition leader’s daily videoconference with the International Heritage Agency in New York was due to start then, which gave her less time to catch him than she’d hoped. At eight thirty, the nightly sound and light show would begin, a gaudy display of coloured spotlights and lasers cast upon the pyramids and the Sphinx. Berkeley and the senior members of the archaeological team always departed soon after the opening chords boomed from the loudspeakers, leaving the juniors and the local hired hands with the scut work of securing and tidying the excavation.

  Macy wasn’t even sure if Berkeley considered her a junior team member, or a mere labourer. Okay, so she had another two years of study before she completed her degree, and maybe her grades didn’t exactly put her at the top of the class, but she was still an archaeologist, kind of. Surely that granted her the right to do something more than make coffee and carry rubble?

  She resumed her pacing, reflected light from the Sphinx’s spotlit face casting an orange wash over her pale olive skin. Her surname might have been Egyptian, but her looks revealed her mother’s Cuban heritage. She paused to straighten her ponytail, then at the sound of muffled voices hurriedly rounded the giant paw to see the team boss emerge from the dig. On their first meeting, she had initially thought Dr Logan Berkeley to be attractive, in an academic sort of way. Mid-thirties, a swoop of chestnut-brown hair across his forehead, refined features . . . then he’d opened his mouth and revealed himself as an arrogant jerk.

  It was a description she could apply equally to the two men with him. TV producer Paul Metz was squat, barrel-shaped and bearded, with a lecherous gaze that to her distaste Macy often found aimed in her direction. She liked male attention, sure . . . but not from all males.

  The other man was Egyptian. Dr Iabi Hamdi was a senior official with the Supreme Council of Antiquities, the government agency overseeing all Egypt’s archaeological activities. The paunchy, thin-haired Hamdi was technically in charge of the dig, but seemed happy to let Berkeley do whatever he wanted, being more interested himself in getting his face in front of the TV cameras. Macy wouldn’t be surprised if, at the moment the long-thought-mythical Hall of Records was finally revealed to the world, Hamdi popped up in front of the lens to boast of the crucial part he’d played in its discovery.

  That broadcast was the current topic of discussion. ‘So you’re abso, pos-i-tively, one hundred per cent sure that you’ll crack open the door right on time?’ Metz asked, in a tone suggesting he thought otherwise.

  ‘For the last time, we’ll open the vault entrance exactly when I said,’ Berkeley told him, his nasal, superior New England voice filled with frustration. ‘I know what I’m doing. This isn’t my first dig, you know.’

  ‘It’s the first one you’ll have done live in front of fifty million people, though. And the network won’t be happy if their prime time special is two hours of you chipping at bricks. They wanna see something spectacular, and so does everyone else. People love this Egyptian crap.’

  Torn between defending his heritage and keeping on good terms with the producer, Hamdi decided on the latter. ‘Dr Berkeley, can you assure me that we will keep to the schedule?’

  ‘Eight days from now,’ Berkeley said through clenched teeth, ‘we’ll be showing the world something even more incredible than Atlantis, don’t you worry.’ He turned towards a nearby portable cabin with a satellite dish on its roof: the team’s headquarters. ‘And speaking of schedules, it’s time I checked in.’

  Maybe he wasn’t in the most receptive mood, but Macy had to take the chance. ‘Dr Berkeley, have you got a minute?’

  ‘Only as long as it takes me to walk to the cabin,’ he snapped, giving her a dismissive look. ‘What is it?’

  ‘It’s about me,’ said Macy as she kept pace. ‘I was hoping I could get more involved with the actual archaeological work? I think I’ve proved that I’m up to the job.’

  Berkeley stopped and turned to face the young woman. ‘The job?’ he said, letting out a sarcastic sigh. ‘That says it all, doesn’t it? Macy, archaeology is not a job. It’s a calling, an obsession, something that drives your every waking thought. If all you want is a job, McDonald’s and 7-Eleven are always hiring.’

  ‘That’s not what I meant—’ Macy began, taken aback by his hostility.

  ‘The reason you haven’t been involved with the main dig,’ Berkeley interrupted, ‘is precisely that: you haven’t been involved. What, exactly, have you done to earn a place here? The other juniors all have multiple digs on their résumés, and they all graduated with the highest honours. You?’ His mouth twisted with contempt. ‘Charity fundraising connections. And good causes or not, I don’t appreciate having unqualified undergraduates foisted on me because Renée Montavo at the UN owed your mom a favour. You ought to be damn grateful to be here at all. Now, go and finish the clean-up. I’m late for my videoconference with Professor Rothschild.’ He strode into the cabin, slamming the door.

  Macy stared after him in shock, then turned to find Hamdi and Metz watching her. Hamdi adjusted his little silk bow tie uncomfortably before going back into the shelter covering the main excavation, leaving her alone with Metz. ‘Wanna career change?’ he said, leering. ‘I got the numbers of some modelling agencies.’

  ‘Get bent!’ She scowled and stormed off round the Sphinx. Ahead,
one of the uniformed security contractors was heading up the ramp out of the excavated pit in which the Sphinx sat. Wanting to be alone, she turned and went into the ruined temple in front of the statue, dropping into the shadows within the broken walls.

  She sat on a stone block, trying to hold her emotions in check. She was angry, but also upset. Egypt definitely hadn’t matched up to her dreams - not so much wonder and romance as drudgery, smog, stomach bugs and hissing, pinching, cat-calling creeps accosting her on the streets. And now she’d just been completely insulted by her boss. Asshole!

  The lighting changed, dropping the Temple of the Sphinx even deeper into darkness. The sound and light show was about to start; after two weeks, Macy practically knew the almost comically portentous narration by heart. Normally she would be packing away the team’s gear during the display, but tonight . . .

  ‘Screw that,’ she muttered, lying back on the stone. Berkeley could pick up his own stupid tools.

  Site security chief Sefu Gamal quickly traversed the walkway running between the Temple of the Sphinx and the smaller, marginally less ancient ruin to its northwest. At the walkway’s end was a guarded gate. Since 2008, the once-open plain of the Giza plateau had been surrounded by over twelve miles of high steel and wire fence, partly to restrict the numbers of peddlers hawking trinkets and camel rides to visitors, and partly for security purposes: Egypt was unwilling to risk a repeat of the 1997 massacre of tourists at Luxor. Now, the plateau was observed by hundreds of security cameras and members of the Tourist Police, and all visitors were screened by metal detectors.

  But there were more fences within, these not there to protect tourists from terrorists, but to protect Egypt’s treasures from tourists. Access to the interiors of the pyramids was restricted to just a handful of visitors each day, while the Sphinx itself was almost entirely off-limits - and with a major archaeological excavation in progress, the Sphinx compound was even more closely guarded than usual. The sandstone pit containing the statue was bounded to the east by its temple, to the west and south by cliffs where it had been dug out of the desert, and to the north by a modern stone wall supporting a road across the plain. Only those with passes were normally allowed access.

  But tonight there would be an exception.

  Gamal reached the gate and waited as the son et lumière display began. A couple of hundred tourists sat in ranks of chairs beyond the Temple of the Sphinx, watching the spectacle. He would have preferred the meeting to take place much later, after the last display had finished and the tourists - and the IHA team - had gone, but the man he was expecting was impatient . . . and quick to anger.

  Approaching headlights: a black Mercedes SUV. This must be his visitor - since the erection of the boundary fence, traffic through the site was restricted. The first person out was unfamiliar, a rangy, long-haired Caucasian in a jacket of what looked like snakeskin, his straggly goatee doing little to conceal the almost equally scaly roughness of his face. He rounded the vehicle to open the door for another man, like Gamal an Egyptian.

  Gamal stepped through the gate to greet him. ‘Mr Shaban,’ he said. ‘A great honour to meet you again.’

  Sebak Shaban had no time to waste on pleasantries. ‘The dig’s behind schedule.’

  ‘Dr Berkeley said—’

  ‘Not that dig.’

  Gamal concealed his discomfort as Shaban turned to look straight at him. An old burn scar ran across his right cheek from what remained of his ear to his top lip, the skin rippled and faintly glossy. The scarring had pulled down the outer corner of his lower eyelid, exposing glistening pink tissue within. From his previous encounters, the security chief was convinced that Shaban was well aware of the psychological impact of his injury upon others, favouring them with the unblemished, fairly handsome left side of his face until he wanted to express his disapproval in graphic form with a simple turn of the head. ‘There was a slight delay - very slight,’ he said quickly. ‘Part of the ceiling collapsed. We’ve already shored it up.’

  ‘Show me,’ ordered Shaban, walking to the gate.

  ‘Of course. Come with me.’ Gamal glanced questioningly at the other man, who followed them through.

  ‘My bodyguard,’ said Shaban. ‘And friend. Mr Diamondback.’

  ‘Diamondback?’ Gamal echoed uncertainly.

  ‘Bobby Diamondback,’ said the bodyguard, his accent a languid yet menacing American drawl. ‘It’s a Cherokee Indian name. Got a problem with that?’

  ‘No, not at all,’ Gamal replied, thinking he looked more like a cowboy than an Indian. He led them along the walkway. ‘This way, please.’

  Mocking the sound and light show’s bombastic narration had slightly lifted Macy out of her black sulk when she spotted Gamal, from her position in the shadows only his upper body visible above the top of the temple’s northern wall.

  There were two other men with him, one an ugly guy with a greasy mullet and a snakeskin jacket, and the other someone she recognised. Mr Sharman, Shaban, something like that? She had seen the scar-faced man briefly at the start of the dig; he was connected with the religious organisation co-funding it with the IHA. Presumably he was here to meet Berkeley.

  The trio made their way to the corner of the smaller temple, where Gamal paused and looked towards the Sphinx - almost furtively, Macy thought. The cold stare of the man in the snakeskin jacket swept over her as he surveyed the area, then unexpectedly flicked back. An involuntary shudder ran through her. She had no idea why - she had every right to be there, and wasn’t doing anything wrong - but by the time the rational part of her mind told the rest of her body to relax, he had looked away again.

  To Macy’s surprise, rather than descending the ramp towards the Sphinx, Gamal hopped across the gap between it and the upper level of the Sphinx compound, disappearing from her view. The other men followed.

  Weird. The upper temple was over a thousand years younger than its larger neighbour, a product of the New Kingdom from around 1400 BC, and while it was in relatively better condition than the Temple of the Sphinx it was much less important historically. Why was Gamal giving a private tour? In the dark, at that?

  Standing, she saw the tops of the men’s heads as they walked towards the temple entrance - and continued past it. Now she was really curious. There was nothing else up there. Where were they going?

  Macy climbed out of the temple, seeing the trio rounding the ruin above. Some childhood Nancy Drew instinct kicked in, the urge to find out what they were doing rising, but she resisted it - until shouting came from the Sphinx. Berkeley, yelling at an Egyptian labourer who had just dropped a box.

  Screw it, she thought. If Berkeley was still acting like a jerk, she didn’t want to be anywhere near him. Instead, she ascended the ramp and jumped across to the upper temple.

  Green laser lines flashed above her, projecting hieroglyphics on the pyramids as the narrator sang the praises of Osiris, the immortal god-king of Egyptian legend. ‘Yeah, yeah, heard it all before,’ Macy whispered as she peered round the temple wall.

  Part of the plateau’s north end had been cordoned off by orange plastic netting where repairs were under way on the high wall. A couple of small cabins and a tent-like structure stood amongst stacks of bricks and piles of rubble. It was such a mundane sight that while Macy had seen it every day as she entered the Sphinx compound, she had never actually noticed it before. Certainly nobody ever seemed to do any actual work there.

  There was someone there now, though. As well as the men at the gate, other guards patrolled the compound to make sure no tourists tried to get up close and personal with the Sphinx. But the man waiting for Gamal and the others wasn’t patrolling. He was guarding the construction site.

  The lighting changed, more lasers and spotlights slashing the black sky. The guard watched the display, only turning away when the visitors reached him. Brief words were exchanged, then he let them through the netting.

  Gamal reached the tent and pulled aside a flap, revealing lights within
. The other two ducked through, and with another furtive backwards glance Gamal followed. Macy jerked back behind the temple wall, wondering if he’d seen her, before realising how dumb she was being. So what if he had?

  She peeked out again. The guard was strolling along the netting perimeter, looking bored. Through the gaps around the tent flap, she glimpsed activity within.

  The movement stopped.

  Macy kept watching, but it didn’t resume. What were they doing in there? Unless all three men were squashed together at one end, the tent didn’t seem big enough for them to keep out of sight. If anything, it now looked empty, but she couldn’t see how that was possible. It was right against the high wall.

  She noticed something else, though: a faint plume of smoke. No, not smoke - fumes, chugging up from the end of a hose. But there wasn’t a generator in sight.

  So where were the fumes coming from?

  Interest now well and truly piqued, she rounded the corner, keeping low behind a pile of dirt. But she quickly realised her stealthiness was pointless; to reach the construction site, she would have to cross a wide, open space, and unless the guard was blind he couldn’t miss her.

  But in a few moments, maybe he would be blind . . .

  She knew what came next in the sound and light show, having heard it every night. The narrator was about to begin his tale of Khufu, builder of the Great Pyramid - and the lights would briefly drop to black before illuminating Khufu’s monument at full brightness.

  Macy closed her eyes, waited . . .

  The lights went out.

  She opened her eyes again and raced for the tent. Only a few seconds before the Great Pyramid lit up like a beacon—

  Dramatic music thundered from the loudspeakers, the Great Pyramid exploding into view to the northwest. Macy reached the gap in the netting and skidded to a halt behind one of the stacks of bricks. She glanced round it and saw the guard staring at the floodlit structure.