The Lost Tomb of Cleopatra (Brook Burlington Book 1) Page 18

  Grekov was delighted to announce the news. "We dig in the new place now!" he told Katy and Brook as they got out of the SUV. "Roman artifacts, very old. Swords, armor, helmets. Much more valuable than Nazi garbage. Much more interesting."

  He escorted the two women in that direction, waving his hand over his face when Katy tried to capture his enthusiasm on camera. "No pictures, please. No pictures," he told her.

  Tom and Ali were already digging. Brook sat next to Ali, hoping for some explanation.

  "I had no choice," Ali told her finally. "I tried, but in the end there was no choice."

  Scoffing, Brook started to walk away. Ali grabbed her arm and pulled her to sit again, and she did not resist.

  "Tom tells me you're getting results from the Sinai scrolls," Ali whispered.

  "I don't know what we're getting. Not yet."

  "May I see the images?"

  "I don't think so, Ali." Brook got up. This time, Ali didn't try to stop her.

  Her phone rang. The I.D. simply said "Green." She answered.

  "Professor," she said with a sigh—she wasn't sure how many more troubled men she could deal with this morning.

  "Good news," Professor Green told her from his office. He'd been up late drinking and talking, laughing with his old friends, Emily and Nelson Losser, and was feeling years better, getting to the office early and graphing the now-verified Neferu-created stonework on the map showing where they'd been discovered. "You're on the right track. You're in the area. That area is the size of Ohio, but that's better than searching the whole continent. I think the statues by your ancient friend are in a row, a line of breadcrumbs showing the way. They either fell off the wagons on the way, or the expeditions were abandoned. Perhaps they left the stone works when they got into trouble, intending to come back for them. I don't know."

  "Slow down, Professor," Brook told the man. "I'm not following this at all."

  Green took a deep breath. "Let me start over, then.”

  "Thank you," Brook soothed.

  Green went back to the beginning; recounting how he'd taken photos of various stone sculptures to Emily Losser in the Art Department in hopes she might be able divide them up, separating those created by the illusive Neferu from the others. Green then described how he’d marked a map of where they'd been found, which revealed a trail to Jaghbub and beyond.

  "I think your artisan went there at least once, maybe many times, taking objects to decorate the tomb of his queen."

  Brook stopped and stood perfectly still. The silence was profound. Only a faint breeze in her ear and the gentle clicking of the workers' trowels on the soil reminded her that the Earth still turned and Mankind still made an effort.

  "Thank you, Professor Green." Brook said finally, lacking the right words. "You'll e-mail me that map?"

  "Yes, I will," Green said proudly. "You think it will be of help?"

  He was fishing for a compliment, and he knew it. For much of the last decade, his life had been dedicated to helping the young woman at the other end of the phone, and he'd turned greedy for her approval. The fact that she felt uncomfortable in his presence broke his heart; he wanted nothing more than an understanding of how much he cared about her and her wellbeing.

  "Yes, very helpful," Brook told him. "You wouldn't believe how helpful, I can't tell you. You're an angel."

  Green thought he was going to cry. "Thank you, " he said softly, holding himself in check. "I...I should probably get back to it..."

  "Yes, me too," Brook agreed. "Oh—there's something else. I want you to look at. It's a document like nothing else I've seen, in code or something—I'm not sure. I think it's by the sculptor..."

  "Neferu."

  "Yes. I'll send it over. It's not in any language, just dots."

  Green thought about that. "Interesting," he replied.

  Once they had said their goodbyes, Brook emailed him the pages from the scroll and went back to digging. It was so much easier now that they weren't being sneaky about it. Much of the work was considered tedious—taking photographs, making measurements, cleaning, tagging, writing descriptions, and preparing the finds for transporting—but Brook thrived on the tedium. She considered it a rest for her active mind, a chance to focus on something outside herself.

  After nearly an hour of intense concentration, digging with a trowel around a large potsherd, Brook forced herself to raise her eyes and look around. Katy and Tom worked quietly in the same zone as Brook. Ali, on the other hand, darted between diggers like a nervous cat. As supervisor, he wasn’t expected to dig like the others, but that wasn't the reason he wasn’t digging. He was just too impatient for this aspect of the job, and always had been.

  Tom was different, his focus complete, without any self-consciousness. She marveled at how easily he'd taken to the work, and how comfortable she felt having him around. She suddenly became conscious she was staring, and tore her eyes away.

  "Back to work," Brook muttered, looking again at the fragment of pot she had dug around. It looked like a typical Roman piece, produced in great quantities all over the Empire and used for cooking, eating, and storing oil for cooking or lighting lamps. Brook had seen a thousand of these, but this one lay interior up; red, obviously fine and out of place here, so there was a chance the other side—the one still in the dirt—would be exquisitely decorated. Hope ignited, Brook started digging anew with her trowel.

  ***

  At his desk, Professor Green stared at the photographs Brook had e-mailed him. They weren't photos exactly, more like x-rays or brass rubbings, mostly black, with white dots scattered throughout. At first, Green thought there was some mistake, but recalling Brook's description convinced him otherwise. These were separate hand-drawn images, consecutive pages on the papyrus manuscript scroll.

  It wasn't making much sense, and despite what Brook had insisted, nobody with a pencil in hand and a valuable roll of papyrus would fill in each page completely, leaving the white dots the way Green saw it on his screen. The professor switched on the printer next to his desk, and after consulting an online manual for the particular model, managed to print out one of the pages in negative form, so it consisted of black dots on a white field. Green fished out a pencil, sharpener, and a good eraser from his desk, items which he'd previously vowed to ignore as a recovering crossword addict.

  "This is an emergency," he told himself. "Not a crossword at all." He put the sheet down. "This is connect-the-dots!" Feeling horribly foolish, Green nevertheless gave it a try, hoping for a "help me" in cuneiform, or something equally as mindboggling and ridiculous. There were no numbers to the dots, and they seemed totally random—

  Suddenly, there was a pattern. Six dots. Seven dots? All were closely huddled in the upper left of the photo. Green had seen this before. Long before, back in his skiing days.

  Some kind of logo for ski equipment? No, the cars! The cars up in the mountains had been wildly popular before SUVs took over.

  It’s Subaru! The logo for Subaru! Green shook his head. That couldn't be it, but with nothing left to go on, he did a search for it— to his shock, it was Japanese for the constellation Pleiades.

  "That is it!" Green exclaimed. "The seven sisters! Daughters of Atlas, and nannies to the baby Dionysus!" Green quickly located Orion, too, then searched for the dippers, the only other constellations he could think of—

  Professor Green picked up the phone. "Yes...I'm looking for the Physics and Astrology Department."

  "What department?"

  "Physics and Astrology—wait! I'm sorry, Astronomy Department," Green laughed, a crazy grin on his face. "Physics and Astronomy!" he repeated.

  The operator at the other end put him through.

  48

  London, England / Matrouh Governorate, Egypt

  It was a journey from Istanbul to London to be taken by sea entirely, with just one night in Calais, and three moments of suspense when Cale Burlington was required to produce his passport—on boarding the freighter in the Middle
East, at the port of Calais, and for the ferry to Dover. If Interpol was after him, their tentacles hadn't reached down into customs yet.

  "Maybe I'm just lucky," Cale told himself as he stepped on the train to London.

  Confirming his optimism, Professor Stuart Green was easy enough to find as well. He was in his office at UCL packing up.

  "Professor Green?" Cale asked at the door.

  Green jumped, startled.

  "Sorry—didn't mean to scare you."

  "No worries," Green said. "What can I do for you?"

  "I'm Cale Burlington," Cale told the professor, offering his hand.

  Green looked up, surprised again. "Oh. Yes. You," Green answered, shaking Cale's hand like a man prepared for a fight.

  "We finally meet."

  "Small world," Green growled.

  "I took a freighter all the way from Istanbul to see you," Cale told Green, an edge matching Green's own sneaking into his voice.

  "I'm flattered," Green told the man, "but I'm sorry to tell you it was a waste of time."

  Cale found a chair amid the boxes and took a seat. He put down his bag, worn from decades of travel. "You're moving out?" he asked, waving at the mess.

  "Packing for America."

  "America?"

  "That's right—West Virginia University—a new position. Sounds lovely, doesn't it? Thanks to you."

  "Me?"

  "The project. Your project," Green spat bitterly.

  Cale pondered that, surprised, realizing that Green was just as mad at Cale as Cale was at Green. If it was an act, it was a good one. "They fired you here?" Cale asked.

  "Not yet," Green replied. "But it's just a matter of time. And I'm not moving up to Oxford or Cambridge anytime soon—I'm pretty sure of that—so why not? The Americans don't care how many statues and pot shards I nicked in the middle of the night."

  "Yeah, how many was it?" Cale asked.

  "Nil. None. That's your department, isn't it?" Green retorted.

  "What happened that night?" Cale asked. "Just stop packing for a minute and tell me what happened."

  Green looked for a moment like he might take mercy on the man.

  "I was scammed just as much as you," Cale complained. "I had no idea what was going to happen, you have to believe me. If I was in on the deal, would I come all this way to see you like this?"

  "Maybe. With a gun or knife. Eliminate the witnesses one by one."

  Cale laughed. He could see Stuart Green was genuinely scared, the kind of scared only the British upper classes could exhibit, like a person who'd never had anything genuine to fear in his entire life.

  "It's a miracle we won the war," Cale commented.

  "I don't know what you mean by that," Green answered, "but I'm sure it's an insult, which I will graciously ignore. Very graciously, considering what you've put me through!"

  "Just tell me what happened."

  Green kept packing, and Cale was ready to dismiss his trip as a lost cause. Finally, he spoke again. "Strelov and another man came to my hotel room-slash-prison cell that night. It was truly Shakespearian. I assumed they were there to kill me à la Richard the Third, or any number of other dreary pillars of British history. All they wanted was my silence, as it turned out, which I agreed to."

  "Your silence."

  "Exactly. My silence concerning the corruption of the dig and my suspicions about the whole operation."

  "Which you were going to tell me about when I showed up," Cale concluded.

  "I hoped I could trust you. You were my only hope. You let me down, didn't you?"

  "I came too late, that's all."

  Green shrugged.

  "Did they threaten you?" Cale asked.

  "Strelov showed me a gun."

  Cale wondered if that was all. He searched Green's face—no sign of bruising, and he seemed intact otherwise as well.

  "You're sure it was Strelov?" Cale asked.

  Green shrugged again. "I knew Strelov a little. He hung around the site every once in a while, coming and going. He was interested in what we found, but only in a material way—'Is this rare? How much is this worth?'—that sort of thing. If I'd known he was carrying a weapon, I wouldn't have gone anywhere near him."

  "So you did what they said?"

  "What would you do?" Green asked. "Die? I was afraid for my life, wasn't I? I saw Jesus, right then, I tell you, and decided my life was more important than dead people and their civilizations. So I did what they said."

  "Which was what? What did they say to do?"

  "Shut up, get on the next bus to Ankara, fly back to the U.K. and not talk to you, by the way."

  "Was the other man Jacob Linsky?" Cale asked.

  Green shook his head.

  "You're sure?" Cale insisted.

  "I know Jacob a little, too. At least, I know who he is. It wasn't him. This bloke was American. A suit. At first I thought he might be police, but the suit was too expensive. It was from Savile Row, or the New York equivalent. Italian shoes. Bespoke up and down, head to toe. Posh all the way."

  ***

  The pot was beautifully decorated.

  "Look, look!" Brook called to the others.

  She'd carefully pulled the item from the dirt, and gasped as she turned it over in her hand.

  The others gathered to see. This was no ordinary utilitarian pot, but something special, with a nude, young, winged goddess flying or running through the clouds, surrounded by intricate decoration—both erotic and innocent.

  "Wow," Ali said as Brook offered the reddish brown object to him. He shook his head and didn't take it. "What's that doing here?"

  "Some general liked to live high on the hog, I think," Katy remarked.

  "What do you mean?" Tom asked.

  "That's special. Fancy. Fine ware, for the finest table," she explained. "Why he brought it along on a field trip..."

  "Good work," Ali said, daring to pat Brook on the back.

  "Thank you," she answered.

  The find buoyed the spirits of everyone involved. They went back to work with renewed energy. Brook took pictures of her find and wrote down a description, including the exact location. The discovery had also broken the meditative silence of the dig. In the distance, Brook could hear Katy chat to Tom.

  "That pot's also unusual because by this time, about the time of Christ, the Romans had moved on to glass for most of their finest pieces."

  "Glass?"

  "That's right."

  "Will we find glass here?" Tom asked.

  "Probably not," Katy answered, "but I wouldn't have said we'd find Brook's pot over there either."

  "Awesome." Tom remarked.

  "The Romans used pots like crazy. They're all over the Empire, mostly cheaply made, easily broken and generally worthless no matter how old. However," Katy paused, "they can tell us a great deal about how the ancient Romans lived—that's their real value."

  Tom nodded, impressed with the idea.

  With her find safely under the canopy, tagged and boxed, Brook hurried back to the site of the original find, anxious to locate the other half of the pot. Her search paid off, and after another hour of careful digging, Brook was able to put the two pieces together, creating one jar, large, with only a small triangle missing. Brook was confident that triangle existed nearby, if it hadn't been ground to dust. She examined the pot again. What such an object was doing out here was anybody's guess.

  For the commander's table, no doubt, she decided.

  ***

  "You're right," the astronomer said. "It's a star-map of some sort. Not very sophisticated, but that's what it is."

  Professor Green was speaking on the phone to Professor Richard Yeats of the Physics and Astronomy Department.

  "Where was it drawn? Can you tell?" Green asked.

  "Somewhere Mediterranean would be my guess," Yeats told Green. "But really, anywhere in the Northern Hemisphere. I'd have to really get into it to give you an exact location."

  "But you could, couldn'
t you?"

  "Ahhh..." the astronomer groaned, "I don't know. I've got a lot on my plate, and I've never tried something like that. It's not a photograph, right? It's an illustration?"

  "Yes, that's right."

  "It would all depend on the accuracy. With a photo, you might be able to figure out the angle by measuring the way the planets work in the picture, and the moon..." The man trailed off. "When was this made?"

  "About two thousand years ago."

  Yeats whistled his amazement.

  "I need to know where it was drawn," Green pressed.

  A long pause followed while Green let Yeats think. Finally, the astronomer responded. "You need close objects, since you can't count on the relationships between the stars—not without precise measurement..." Green waited some more. "It’s a very interesting problem, actually."

  Green smiled—the man was hooked.

  "Can you give me a few days?"

  "Certainly."

  "I'd like to get a couple of grad students in on this, too."

  "Okay," Green agreed.

  "Very interesting."

  "I have two of these so far, with more coming."

  "Good!" the astronomer exclaimed. "Send those, too. I'll see what I can do."

  "I'd love to get a good latitude and longitude—"

  "I got that. Definitely know what you're after. You think there's buried treasure or something?"

  "Absolutely," Green told the man, "but I'm afraid it won't belong to us if we find it."

  Yeats laughed. "You're talking to a man who studies stars all day," the astronomer told Green. "Haven't been able to bring a single one home yet."

  Green chuckled. "I hear you. Thanks," he said, and they hung up.

  49

  Morgantown, WV / Alexandria, Egypt

  It was entirely an accident. Professor Stuart Green stood in the checkout line of his local supermarket, a full basket of food—mixes, frozen dinners, peanut butter, beer; the kind of things that marked him as a single man who never learned to cook. He'd settled in nicely to life in West Virginia. He'd met many people in the few weeks since arriving from England, but had yet to find any real friends. Standing in line, staring at the magazine rack, he wondered if he was destined to stay alone. People had been friendly. They were intrigued and delighted by his English accent. Of course, as a Brit he exhibited a certain amount of reserve, had radar for avoiding closeness, and a preference for a degree of respectable distance. Perhaps that stage of his life—of close, intimate relationships—had ended with the move to America. He'd once had a multitude of friends, and girlfriends.