PIERCE WAS WAITING IN his room when Barnaby knocked on the door and entered.
“Sit down,” he said. “Make yourself a drink. I spent the day in the library of the American University here. I also talked to a few people—on general matters—and have come to several conclusions.”
“Yes?”
“First, it can only be done one way—as a straightforward, legitimate archaeological expedition.”
“But I told you! They’ll watch us every minute—”
“Not if we’re smart,” Pierce said. “Our expedition doesn’t have to be searching for the tomb, does it?”
Barnaby was silent.
“We will need a reasonable cover,” Pierce continued. “The expedition will have to be approved by the Cairo Museum staff and the Department of Antiquities, and probably by the UNESCO liaison. I’ll count on you to devise a project that puts us near the Valley of Kings for credible, if unexciting, reasons. Can you come up with something?”
“I suppose so.”
“All right. Second, we will need money. I understand from my friend Dr. Aliopoulous at the American University that few foundations are putting money into Egyptology anymore, except for saving the flooded Nubian monuments.”
“That’s true.”
“So we need a benefactor, a person of eccentricity and wealth. I know just the man.”
Barnaby began to feel a certain sense of helplessness. What had been, just a few hours before, his idea was no longer his. Pierce was taking control of everything. He was both grateful and resentful.
“Go on.”
“Third, we will need help. Obviously, native laborers are out of the question, though they are traditionally employed. We must put together a team of capable and strong people to do the manual work involved. Naturally, they will have to know the secret and share in the eventual profits.”
Barnaby frowned.
“Well, did you expect to do the digging all by yourself, on weekends?”
“All right,” Barnaby said. “What else?”
“We must have a method of removing the treasure and transporting it elsewhere. Now, the whole operation as I see it works like this.”
Pierce spread a tourist map of Luxor out on the bed.
“You will begin thinking of an excuse for an archaeological expedition. When I contact you that we have our patron, you will work your way up the bureaucratic ladder, bribing where necessary. Once you have a concession, start collecting provisions for the expedition. We’ll need a Land Rover, a half-dozen tents, sleeping bags, food for six or seven. Try to think of a project which will give us an excuse for batteries and lights, for night work.
“I will recruit all necessary personnel—paying my own travel expenses—and collect them in Athens, where I will brief them. We will meet you in Cairo and proceed to Luxor.
“This expedition, like the man who sponsors it, will be highly colorful and eccentric—I believe the term is a ‘party dig.’ We will all be out for a good time and a bit of adventure. You will be the patient, long-suffering scientist who has to endure our buffoonery in order to gain access to our money.”
Pierce thought to himself that it would not be a hard part for Barnaby to play.
“The rationale of our approach is based on the assumption that government watchdogs will be off-duty at night. The tombs, as I understand it, are over here—” he pointed to the map “—on the other side of the Nile from the town of Luxor. Anybody who is assigned to keep track of us, and somebody is sure to be sent along, will return to Luxor each night. After all, why sleep on the ground when you can have a nice bed? And there is little chance of our escaping with anything large. Any of us who leave the dig, which is out in the desert in the middle of nowhere, will be watched carefully. Any packages we mail, any letters we write, will be opened—we can expect that. They will think that it is impossible for us to get anything of value out of the site and so will watch us casually.”
“Won’t they be right? The road is on the other side of the river, remember—the only road back to Cairo.”
“We won’t move the stuff by road,” Pierce said.
“By air? The airfield is also on the other side.”
“Not by air.”
Barnaby paused. “The railroads are out of the question. Completely out of the question.”
“Quite right.”
Barnaby took a long drink, put his glass down carefully, and looked at Pierce irritably. “You’re crazy,” he said. “I thought of going overland by truck, too. We could make for Libya and try to ship it out from Tripoli. The Libyans wouldn’t suspect anything. But it’s hundreds of miles of desert, with only two large oases in between, El Kargeh and El Dakhel. Even in Land Rovers, it would be one chance in a hundred that we’d reach civilization alive.”
“That’s true.” Pierce folded his hands quietly.
“Then how?”
“I have worked it out,” Pierce said. “There is only one way that it can be done, the only really logical possibility…. But actually, moving the contents of the tomb is not our greatest problem.”
“What then? Getting it out of the country?”
“No,” Pierce said, making himself another drink. “The greatest problem is selling it.”
“What do you mean?”
“Did you ever wonder how we are going to convert this treasure into hard cash?”
There was a silence. Barnaby puffed his cigarette. Pierce had hit a question that had not even occurred to him. The treasure was certainly valuable—priceless, literally—but the actual value of its gold and gems, taken apart, melted down, would not be so great. Much of the treasure of Tutankhamen’s tomb had consisted of gilded wood statuary, most of the intrinsic value lay in its beauty and historical value, not the costliness of the materials.
“Sell it to collectors, I suppose. There are a lot of collectors around who wouldn’t mind buying illegal stuff if it’s genuine. It happens in paintings all the time.”
“True, but how are you going to find all these unscrupulous collectors? And how long will it take you to unload fifty million dollars worth of treasure?”
Barnaby threw up his hands. “All right, how?”
“Ah,” Pierce said. “That’s a secret.”
“You mean you won’t tell me?”
“More or less.”
Barnaby stood up. “Forget it,” he said. “Forget the whole thing. If there’s no trust between us—”
“Of course there’s no trust. Now sit down.” Pierce took an envelope from his breast pocket “This is a plane ticket. Tomorrow I am leaving for Europe, to find people for the project. Shall I cancel it?”
Barnaby hesitated, then sat down. He reviewed what he knew of the plan and decided it was good. If Pierce had figured it out this far, perhaps he could go all the way. He had a better chance than most.
“No,” he said. “Go ahead.”
“There are a few conditions, however,” Pierce said. He smiled easily.
Barnaby waited.
“First of all, I’m running this project. I will be the boss, and I will make the decisions. If anybody wants to do something—if they even want to go off and pee in the rocks—they have to get my permission first.”
Barnaby squirmed. In a sense, he had been expecting this all along, but not so blatant, not so forthright. Perhaps it was best in the long run. There would be no time for squabbles and angry scenes. “Agreed.”
“The money will be distributed as follows: for you, twenty percent of the gross; for me, twenty percent; for our benefactor, twenty-five percent; the remaining thirty-five percent to cover expenses and the other people on the project.”
Barnaby hesitated, then nodded.
“If we do strike it rich, no one is to touch his money for two years. The lump sum will be conservatively invested in Geneva, and any interest will be proportionally distributed before the final division. Everyone must agree to spend whatever portion of their own money is necessary to arrange a credible explanation for their sudden wealth. A man in your position, for instance, might not be noticeable if he suddenly received fifty thousand dollars. But ten million is a different animal. It’s damned hard to conceal.”
“Does everyone else have to agree on all these points?”
“Absolutely.”
“Okay,” Barnaby said. “It’s a deal.”
They shook hands.
Pierce raised his glass. “To the tomb.”
Barnaby smiled. “You know,” he said, “it’s funny. Every archaeologist who has worked at the Valley of Kings has left convinced that he has uncovered the last tomb to be found in the valley. Belzoni said it, Davis said it, Maspero said it. But perhaps this time it really will be the last tomb.”
“All right then” Pierce said. “To the last tomb of the pharaohs.”
“To the last tomb.”