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The wind bore them north, along the flanks of the sandstone cliffs of the Theban Hills. Bones and Maddock took turns at the burner control, sending up a jet of flame every few minutes to ensure that they maintained elevation and stayed in the wind. Although the air currents did not bring them any closer to the Nile, they never lost sight of the green ribbon that cut through the mostly featureless golden desert. After about forty-five minutes of this however, the river course made the left turn Nora had promised, cutting directly across their path.
Five minutes or so after that, the burner’s flame began to sputter, barely reaching the opening to the balloon. Bones gave a heavy sigh. “Well, we knew that was gonna happen. What now?”
“I can see the highway below,” Nora said. “If we can set down close to it, we should be able to find someone to give us a ride on to Dendera.”
“Fayed might be down there, too,” Bones pointed out.
Maddock shook his head. “One thing at a time. Right now, we need to focus on landing this thing, as opposed to crashing. One hot air balloon crash a day is my limit. Let’s keep whatever fuel we have left for braking, and see where we end up.”
Without frequent blasts from the burner to keep the air hot, the balloon soon began to lose altitude. The rate of their descent was considerably slower than that of a skydiver under a parachute, but Maddock knew that when the air cooled to the same temperature as the surrounding sky, they would simply plummet. He curled his hand around the burner control, and waited for that inevitable moment to arrive. With a little luck, there would be enough fuel left to moderate their descent all the way to the ground. If not....
He didn’t want to think about that.
The wind carried them another mile or two closer to the elbow-bend in the river, almost to the green margin of the valley, but then they dropped out of the current that had borne them north, and descended into a gentler breeze that carried them west, back out toward the open desert. Maddock debated giving the burners a quick blast to get back up into the faster winds aloft, but decided that reaching solid ground was the more immediate priority. As they got closer to the ground however, entering an area of relatively high air pressure, the rate of descent slowed almost to nothing, while the wind from the east continued pushing them further from the river valley.
Maddock decided to risk venting some of the hot air, and was immediately rewarded with a feeling of lightness. He released the pull handle, but the feeling did not go away. “Going down!”
Bones, watching their descent from the edge of the gondola, nodded but was silent for several seconds. Then, he shouted. “Better put on the brakes!”
Maddock pulled the burner control on the first word, holding the sputtering flame for a full five seconds.
“Still falling.”
He pulled again, the flame no longer a continuous tongue of bright orange, but rather an eruption of short, sooty yellow spurts, and held it until Bones finally waved his hand to indicate that they were rising again. A look through the broken side of the gondola revealed the ground, now only about twenty feet below them, and rolling past with unnerving swiftness. Although they couldn’t feel it, they were caught in what had to be at least a ten-mile-an-hour breeze.
Ten miles an hour didn’t seem very fast, but trying to land a lighter-than-air aircraft, which had no means of anchoring in place, much less putting on the brakes, was going to be a tricky proposition. “We’re going to have to bail out,” he announced, and then directing his words at Nora, added, “I’ll hit the vent and try to get us a little closer. As soon as we bump, you jump. But don’t try to stay on your feet. Tuck and roll.”
She nodded, soberly.
“What about that stuff?” Bones said, jerking a thumb at the garbage bags full of mold spores.
“We should destroy them,” Nora said, immediately.
Maddock shook his head. “Let’s hang onto them Right now, they’re the only proof we have of what Fayed planned.”
Bones grinned as if he knew a secret, but then scooped both bags up and promptly pitched them out of the gondola. Then, he helped Nora climb onto the padded edge in preparation for her jump.
Maddock pulled the vent release, and a moment later, the basket crunched against the desert floor. Nora cried out and then was gone. The gondola bounced back into the air for a second or two but then came down again and began scraping across the ground.
Bones, shouting, “Hoooo leeeee craaaap!” hurled himself out. Close on his heels, and feeling a sense of déjà vu, Maddock leapt from the gondola for the second time that day.
Heeding his own advice, he bent his knees to absorb the energy of landing and threw himself to the side, rolling on the hard ground until the last of his forward momentum was exhausted. When he raised his head, he saw that the balloon, now empty of passengers, had risen a few feet off the ground and, still caught in the ten-mile-an-hour breeze, was sailing away across the desert like a ghost ship.
He rose gingerly, wincing at yet another set of bruises and scrapes, and turned to look for the others. Bones had already regained his feet and was helping Nora to stand, about a hundred feet further back. Both were gazing across the desert toward the dark smudge that was the Nile Valley.
“Guess we’ve got some walking to do,” he said as he joined them.
“Maybe not,” Bones countered, pointing toward the horizon.
Maddock followed his line of sight and spotted a plume of dust rising above the desert floor. A vehicle was approaching.
Even from a distance, Maddock could see that it was not Fayed’s white van, but he remained wary as the vehicle—a battered old truck that looked like a cast-off military deuce-and-a-half—rolled up beside them. A wizened old Egyptian in a rumpled jellabiya got out and started speaking in rapid-fire Arabic.
Nora answered in the same language, which seemed to puzzle the old man, but only for a moment. The back and forth continued for a little while, then Nora turned and provided a quick summary of the exchange. “He’s from a nearby farm. He saw the balloon coming down and decided to investigate. He’ll take us to Dendera, but he’ll want compensation.”
“Tell him to bill Fayed for it,” Bones suggested.
Nora grinned and then passed this along to the old farmer. After a moment’s consideration, he shrugged and returned to the cab of his truck. When he was seated, he made a “come on” gesture and barked a quick command which needed no translation.
After retrieving the bags of mold toxin, they settled in for a short ride to the Dendera ruins, which were perched on the edge of the desert, only about five miles from where they had come down.
The Dendera Complex was not as well-organized or majestic as the Temple of Hatshepsut, but it seemed more authentic to Maddock. Perhaps that was due to the fact that, unlike the complex at Deir el-Bahari, there were no tour buses, no crowds of visitors smelling of sun screen. The site wasn’t deserted, but it was definitely a lot quieter. But more than that, the Dendera ruins felt like actual ruins, with broken columns and crumbling walls. The entrance to the temple complex was an enormous free-standing doorway, the stone lintel easily fifty feet above the ground, but to either side, where there ought to have been walls to support it, there were only a few jumbled stone blocks. A headless statue of a reclining lion guarded the left side of the approach—the weathered lump of stone on the platform on the opposite side was all that remained of its twin—and directly behind it was a twelve-foot high stone block engraved with the likenesses of Egyptian gods.
“This is the Gate of Domitian and Trajan,” Nora said, unable to completely set aside her professorial inclination to lecture. “Or what’s left of it.”
Maddock recognized the names. “Roman emperors?”
“Most of the structures here date back only as far as the Ptolemaic dynasty, with most of the recent additions dating to the Roman period, though this has been an important religious center for at least four thousand years.”
They moved through the gate and down a paved walk that bisected a large courtyard littered with the stumps of broken pillars, toward an enormous stone building that appeared to be mostly intact.
“The Temple of Hathor,” Nora said. “Even though it was built by Greco-Roman rulers in the First Century C.E. the temple utilizes the most ancient and sacred style of Egyptian architecture—the mastaba. That word is Arabic—it means ‘stone bench’—but the Egyptian word pr-djed, translates as ‘House of Eternity.’ The oldest tombs in Egypt, pre-dating even the Old Kingdom, were mastabas. The first pyramid ever built, the Step Pyramid of Djoser at Saqqara, is simply a stack of six mastabas, each one smaller than the one under it.”
The Temple of Hathor was not solid like a pyramid however. Halfway up its steeply sloping sides, the front wall opened up to reveal six massive pillars supporting the roof. Each of the pillars was topped with what appeared to be a female head with thick bundles of hair falling down to either side, but the faces had been erased by weather, or more likely, vandalism. Beyond the entrance, the dimly lit interior featured still more pillars and columns, all of them engraved with hieroglyphics and larger figures from the Egyptian pantheon, many of them trimmed with sky blue paint.
Nora led them through the large enclosure, which she identified as “the Large Hypostyle Hall,” and through a maze of passages to a set of stairs descending into the crypts beneath the Temple. Every square inch of stone bore some kind of carving or inscription, even the ceilings, and while some had suffered the ravages of time, other images were startlingly distinct. As they moved along, Maddock heard voices coming from further up the passage—two men engaged in conversation about the Temple and its decorations. He knew this because they were speaking English. He also recognized both voices.
“But you have to admit,” Max Riddle was saying, “It does look like a light bulb.”
“Does it?” countered Zahi Mohamed. “Have you ever seen a lightbulb with a snake inside? A light bulb coming out of a lotus flower?”
As Maddock and the others rounded a corner, they could see a small cluster of people in the passage ahead, bathed in the glow of artificial light from handheld umbrella lights.
“Well, no, but those could be symbolic,” said Riddle.
“Symbolic,” Zahi said, his tone victorious. “Exactly. But symbolizing what? The lotus flower and the serpent are found everywhere in the art of Ancient Egypt. They symbolize the fertility of the Nile—a symbol of enduring life for all of Egypt.”
Nora glanced back at Bones. “Told you.”
Their arrival once again attracted the attention of the production crew, but this time, Zahi didn’t wait for the “cut” command. When his gaze fell upon Nora, he scowled and pushed through the videographers to confront them. The lights and cameras followed him, as did Riddle.
“What are you doing here?” he demanded. “I already gave you permission to conduct your survey.”
Nora hastened to meet him. “Dr. Zahi, I have so much to tell you. We found the tomb of Smenkhkare and Neferneferuaten.”
Zahi folded his arms and scowled. “That is ridiculous. No such tombs exist.”
“I can take you there,” she insisted. “There is an entrance at Deir el-Medina. But first, I must tell you about Fayed—”
Maddock heard shouts from behind them. He turned, and saw a small knot of men hastening toward them. Most wore khaki uniforms with badges and dark berets, and had their pistols drawn and aimed at Maddock and the others. The only unarmed member of the group wore street clothes that were torn, and streaked with dust and sweat.
Nassir Fayed.
“Speak of the devil,” Maddock muttered.