17. The Face of Pharaoh

PIERCE AWOKE EARLY THAT morning, tense with expectation. To his surprise, everyone else was up. At nine, Pierce went over to Nikos, who was throwing his knife at a cardboard box he had set on the ground, retrieving it, stepping back, and throwing it again.

“Well, the letter’s sent.”

Nikos just grunted.

Barnaby and Conway sat around the dying fire and told each other stories. Lisa remained in her tent and refused to talk to him when he poked his head in.

He wandered around the camp until ten. Then, bored and restless, he decided to go to the tomb.

He drove the Land Rover out of camp, feeling the sun on his neck. He steered across the desert, past the mud villages, to the foot of the cliff.

Looking up, he saw the cleft.

He had never been there during the day.

He started to climb, and immediately felt a new ease, a sense of relaxation. He remembered how difficult it had been to climb at night; how his eyes ached from the strain; how he cut his fingers and scraped his knees. It was all so much easier in daylight. So much simpler and open.

He reached the top of the cliff and walked to the cleft. He saw the cigarette butts, remnants of the long nights they had worked here. Now they seemed almost artifacts themselves, signs of long-dead activity. He lowered a rope and climbed down into the cleft.

In the daylight the mystery was gone from the descent. The sense of darkness, of swinging in space, had disappeared. It was all a mechanical, straightforward process. He reached the level of the steps and entered the tomb.

Then, he realized he had forgotten a flashlight.

He hesitated and checked to see if he had matches. He did. He struck one and in the flickering light moved down the passageway to the first chamber.

The match went out. He was surrounded by black. He lit another match and looked around the room. The candles on the floor. He remembered how difficult it had been to break down that first door.

He struck another match and passed on to the sunken chamber. He stared at the hieroglyphics that covered the walls. They meant nothing to him, yet Barnaby could read them. Barnaby was a lucky man.

The flame fluttered and died. He lit still another and continued down to the antechamber where the two huge statues guarded the entrance. He looked at the treasures piled in this room, the personal objects destined for the pharaoh’s afterlife.

He had never used them. Or perhaps, now for the first time, he was using them. He was coming to life again, in the eyes of men thousands of years later. It was possible that he would soon be more famous than he had ever been during his reign.

Pierce moved on to the burial chamber. The great statue of Anubis frowned at him from the entrance to the treasury. His match went out; blackness closed in. Quickly, he lit another.

He faced the gilded shrine. Once more, its immensity astonished him. He squeezed around to the open doors and stepped inside the four shrines, moving next to the sarcophagus. The lid was still blocked up as they had left it. He stared down at the Pharaoh Meketenre.

The face was composed, neither relaxed nor deathly rigid. It had a peaceful, convinced look; the eyes looked forward, straight ahead, as if awaiting some predestined goal.

“I would give anything to know what you thought at the moment you died,” Pierce said.

His voice echoed in the tomb.

The flame went out.

He returned to the camp at noon. As he came over a sandy rise, he looked down at the tents and could hardly believe what he saw.

Four black Land Rovers had pulled up, and a dozen armed guards were leaping out, encircling the camp.

He drove down and parked alongside the Antiquities Service cars. Conway came up, shaking his head.

“Bad news,” he said. “We lose.”

Pierce glanced around at the guards.

A thin man with a glowering, moody face came over to them. He approached gravely.

“Mr. Pierce?”

“Yes.”

“I am Ali Champs,” he said, bowing slightly. “Mr. Iskander’s replacement.”

“Replacement? Has something happened?”

“Yes,” said Ali Champs. “Something has happened.”