The Lost Tomb of Cleopatra (Brook Burlington Book 1) Read online

  Maybe you're not young anymore, he realized with horror. At the same moment, he recognized the face on the cover of one of the magazines on the rack. The face seemed familiar—Green was sure he knew him.

  Anatolia! he realized. The posh man with Strelov.

  "Next," the grocery checker called to Green. Green grabbed the magazine and bought it in anger. Only when he reached his car did he take a look again. The man's name was Raymond Manor.

  ***

  Tom Manor opened up the file and clicked through the new pages from the Sinai scrolls on his computer screen. He'd send these to Brook in time. He just needed to check something. He ran a search for "night sky," selecting "images"—a hunch. The result wasn't instantly satisfying, but eventually he found what he was looking for: an image that matched one in the scrolls almost exactly. He checked his watch; his uncle was an early riser, anxious to get his boat out on the sound. Tom dialed.

  "Hello?" Tom's uncle answered. Tom could hear the wind and the water slapping the bottom of the sailing boat.

  "Hey, it's me," Tom told him.

  "Hey, Tom! How are you?"

  ***

  Cale's legal troubles mounted. The institutions he'd allegedly involved in what they termed “a fraudulent scheme" held him personally responsible, and were willing to sue to recover whatever they could. They asked for millions, a sum Cale did not possess, so when Professor Stuart Green called in the early evening, Cale wasn't too thrilled at first.

  "The man's name is Raymond Manor," Green told Cale.

  "What man?"

  "The man with Strelov that night in the hotel at Anatolia. The posh man with the limo, his name is Raymond Manor. Hedge-fund manager. His picture is on the cover of Net Worth Magazine this month."

  "You're sure?"

  "Positive."

  "I'll call you back."

  Cale hung up the phone, found the magazine at the local grocery store, and read the article.

  Raymond Manor certainly fit the bill. A hedge-funder with ties to Japan, Russia, and the various new nations split off from the former Soviet Union, the CEO was also known as an "archaeology nut", according to the article. His foundation had funded a number of explorations and excavations throughout the world, the story went on—a surprise to Cale, who thought he knew all the major players in the field.

  He wasn't surprised when Raymond Manor didn't return his calls.

  "Tell him I'm going to the newspapers if I don't hear by tomorrow," Cale told Manor's assistant after several failed attempts.

  ***

  "What happened to my pot?" Brook demanded in the hotel lobby the next morning.

  "What pot?" Ali asked, stalling, pulling her into a corner away from anybody listening, including Grekov and Rabbit, who were nearby, as always.

  "You know what pot," Brook seethed, pointing to the sheets of paper in her hand, tapping them.

  Ali took the pages and perused them, trying to come up with some explanation that might satisfy the angry woman in front of him.

  "It's not on the manifest, Ali," Brook needled. "Don't bust your eyes looking for it."

  "It's just a mistake, an oversight," he answered.

  "No it's not, and you know it."

  "It just hasn't been listed yet, that's all. I'll look into it," he said simply, attempting to hand back the papers, which Brook refused to take.

  "Then why isn't the pot in the locker?" Brook asked, raising her voice, which worried Ali greatly.

  "You went to the locker?" Ali choked.

  Yes, Brook had gone to the locker. She found out where they were keeping the artifacts and took the manifest with her, determined to get to the bottom of things. She'd had to slip out of the hotel in the dead of night, and escape the gaze of her two Russian handlers, but that had been easy compared to dealing with the armed guards at the storage site, who didn't believe Brook's credentials at first. Money talked in this case—more than Brook wanted to spend—and the promise that they could watch her the entire time, and she wouldn't remove anything from the locker.

  She knew the combination to the lock, which helped convince the pair she had some degree of permission. Technically, as one of supervisors of the expedition, Brook had every right to access the goods. Practically, she and Ali would both have to approve everything; Strelov, too, for that matter. As far as ownership of the things inside the locker, it was all the legal property of the nation of Egypt, which in itself was a complication.

  The two guards pocketed their money and allowed Brook inside the box-like room. It was about the size of a moving truck or boxcar, but only a tenth of the way filled. To Brook's relief, the World War II artifacts had been separated out and stored elsewhere, so she only needed to deal with the hundred or so Roman artifacts removed from the second site. It took her less than an hour, even with rechecking twice, to discover everything was accounted for with matching tag-numbers and accurate barcodes—everything except one item, the two halves of the pot she'd dug up that very day.

  "Brook, I don't know what to say," Ali said, taking Brook’s hand and placing the recent manifest into it.

  "Who's skimming?" Brook asked. "You?"

  Ali looked hurt.

  "Maybe you didn't hear me," Brook offered. "Maybe I should speak a little louder?" she suggested, raising her voice, attracting the curiosity of the Russian bodyguards across the room.

  Ali turned away from them.

  Are they lip-readers, too? Brook wondered.

  "It's Strelov," he hissed.

  "You can't do this, Ali," Brook told him. "You can't skim the best pieces off the top like this is some mob-owned Vegas casino. Those days are gone. I won't be party to it. I'll blow the whistle on the whole thing."

  "They'll kill you," Ali stated simply.

  "I'll take that chance."

  "They'll kill me, too."

  "You shouldn't have done it! You should have just said 'no'!"

  "They'll kill your friend Katy, and Tom—don't you care about them?" Ali begged.

  Brook sighed. She thought. This is who you are, she told herself. If you don't stand up for yourself now, you are nothing.

  "Don't you want to find Cleopatra?" Ali asked.

  Yes, Brook thought, more than anything in the world.

  She hesitated, which Ali mistook for acquiescence. "If that pot isn't back with the rest of it by tonight," Brook growled intensely, "with its description, tab, and barcode back on the manifest, you can kiss your career as an archaeologist good bye, Ali."

  "Don't, BB," Ali begged. "Don't put me in this position."

  "It's this or guided tours of the sphinx on camelback till you're old and wasted. Understand?" Brook slapped the manifest pages against his chest and marched off, leaving them to flutter uselessly to the floor.

  If Grekov and Rabbit understood the import of the drama before their eyes, they didn't let on. If they knew of the thievery, they might have guessed, Brook supposed. She wondered about that as she walked out the front of the hotel, anxious to get back to the dig, and hoping she wouldn't get shot for standing her ground.

  "Pottery is not worth dying for," her father had once told her, not long before his death. She honestly didn't know if that was true, and certainly had no idea if her father really believed it either.

  Brook's phone rang while she waited for the caravan to take her to the dig. The ID said "Marta—Germany."

  "Please tell me you have good news for me, Marta," Brook answered.

  "I have news, but I don't know if it's good. I found out about Muller," Marta told Brook. "He's listed as 'missing in action.'"

  "Damn!"

  "That's what I said," Marta agreed. "It doesn't help us much."

  "Does it say where? Or when?"

  "The 'where' is near Siwa Oasis, west of the Qattara Depression.”

  "Okay, that fits."

  "It says Libya, not Egypt."

  "That's good, too. A date?"

  "February 1942."

  Brook ran that over in her mind.r />
  "Does that help?" Marta asked.

  "I don't know," Brook admitted. "Is that all there is?"

  "Most of the records were burned in the Allied bombings."

  "I understand," Brook told her former student. "Thank you, you did good."

  "Should I keep translating?" Marta asked.

  "Yes, yes, absolutely," Brook replied. "Get back to work on that.”

  "Okay, bye."

  "Thanks again."

  They hung up.

  Brook thought about what Marta had said. She was zeroing in, that was certain. She knew the area to look in, but it was a vast, empty area the size of a state, and it wouldn't be Rhode Island.

  Brook sighed. Just let me dig somewhere...

  50

  Morgantown, WV / New York, NY

  "I'd say it's an early version of MapApp," Professor Yeats of the Astronomy Department told Professor Green on the phone.

  "MapApp?"

  "It's an application for your phone. Tells you which way you go. You know."

  Green didn't know. He'd heard about such things, and he knew his students used that sort of thing. People were using devices like this out in the field. Longitude and latitude could be calculated down the square meter now. "A mapping tool?" he ventured.

  "Exactly. A mapping tool for an ancient traveler. Stop for the night, draw the stars. Better than breadcrumbs any day for finding your way back."

  "Where?" Green blurted out. "Where?"

  "West-Central Egypt," the astronomer replied. "If the guy was as accurate as I think he was, I got him pinpointed down to less than a quarter kilometer. Each page is about 15 kilometers from the last, heading southwest, so I figure one day's hard journey in rough terrain—12 miles a day—then he stops and draws the stars again. Close to dawn, I figure, since they used the night sky to guide them and it's hot as hell during the day if I'm right about where they are. Time of year is a little tricky; we're having some argument amongst our team—"

  "Thank you, thank you!" Green exclaimed as a map of Egypt came up on his screen. "I'm getting the map now."

  "Are you going to publish this?" the astronomer asked. "'’cause we'd like to get in on this, maybe co-publish—"

  "Certainly, certainly—we'll talk," Green cut the man off.

  "This might be considered a real breakthrough in astronomical circles, and we're always getting flack about not having 'practical applications’—'"

  "I'll let you know," Green interrupted again. "Thanks again."

  He hung up on the man, anxious to get the information to Brook.

  Green zoomed in on the image, a line from somewhere near Alexandria across to the Libyan Desert; longitude and latitude numbers clearly visible—the Astronomy Department had come through for him.

  Green dialed, but was only able to reach Brook's voicemail. He hung up without leaving a message, then worried her phone would give his number as a missed call. Green stewed in his office chair, a paranoid fever descending on him like that one he felt on the Anatolian Plain so many years ago.

  Perhaps you should get a cheap phone with one of those cards, he thought. Untraceable...

  Professor Green picked up his phone again and called Brook a second time. He took a deep breath and put on his most pleasant, professorial, early-evening seminar voice, and left a message:

  "Hello Brook. It's Professor Green, just checking to see everything's all right. Hope the work is going well. Bye."

  Doom—that was the feeling he had—doom. He couldn't help being certain Brook was in danger. He didn't trust Ali; and he had a vague sense Strelov was involved, though he had no direct proof of that, just the suddenness of the whole operation and unanswered questions surrounding the funding.

  Egypt. Green wrote the word on a slip of paper. He kept writing; Veils. Mystery. Death.

  "Bet your sweet asp," he muttered.

  ***

  After a long negotiation, Raymond Manor agreed to meet with Cale Burlington at a place of Cale's choosing. Cale picked a corner of Central Park not far from Manor's office, and called him at the very last minute.

  Cale sat at a bench a hundred yards from the site, which gave him a wide view of the area. He hoped he was being unnecessarily paranoid, that Raymond Manor wouldn't resort to murder to further his aim, but Cale was also a realist, and if Manor was associated with Strelov, anything could happen.

  Through the trees, Cale could see the busy avenue Manor would use to approach him. A thousand single, middle-aged men seemed to pour out of the nearby office buildings and head into the park, but Cale didn't spot his target. He had chosen a certain bench for Manor to sit on, with two backups just in case it was occupied. If someone lurked nearby, Cale would see him, and just in case, he had a .32 in his jacket pocket.

  A man with distinguished-looking grey hair entered the park and took a seat at the bench Cale had indicated. Cale looked away, checking an alternate bench, and then jerking his head back to the first one.

  It was definitely Raymond Manor, but he looked ten years older than the magazine cover. He was dressed neatly in a three-piece suit, and wore a camel-hair coat. Even with a couple thousand dollars' worth of fine attire on his body, his face showed the sleeplessness of a homeless man. Cale enjoyed seeing that. He hoped Raymond Manor was suffering for his crime.

  Reaching into his jacket and fingering the pistol, but careful not to touch the trigger, Cale stood and took a long, slow walk to the other bench.

  "Don't get up," Cale ordered when he came close. "You talk, I'll stand." He stopped a few feet in front, forcing Manor to look up at him, squinting into the midday sun behind his head.

  "I'm not going to tell you anything," Raymond Manor said without rancor—a statement of fact.

  "I think you are," Cale replied, positioning the gun, making sure Manor saw the shape of it in Cale's pocket.

  "No he is..." Manor replied, nodding off to the distance beyond Cale.

  Suspecting a trick, Cale angled himself to keep an eye on Manor while he looked to where the other man was indicating.

  In the distance, up the pathway, walking as fast as his ancient legs could carry him, was Cale's old friend Jacob Linsky—older, greyer, and thinner, but definitely Jacob.

  "Oh God...Jacob." Cale sighed. "What's he doing here?"

  Raymond Manor didn't answer.

  Cale was pretty sure—even after all he'd been through—that the worst of his heartbreak was still to come.

  ***

  Brook ached. The work was getting to her, she had to admit. She begged off dessert and headed for the elevator alone. The others would stay at the table and drink for an hour or two more—there had been a time when Brook would have matched them shot for shot.

  Ali hurried into the elevator with Brook. She watched him hide in the corner, peek out, and hit the button for his floor repeatedly—

  "Grekov? Rabbit?" he asked, unable to tell himself.

  "They're staying put."

  "Good."

  The doors shut and the elevator jerked upward.

  "I got it back for you," Ali explained. "The pot that went missing. I got it back. We'll take it to the museum in Cairo. Tonight. I'll drive."

  Brook stared at Ali, not sure of what she just heard.

  "You stole it?" she asked.

  Ali shook his head. "Just returning it to its rightful owner. The museum has agreed to accept it, no questions asked."

  "How?" Brook asked, still bewildered.

  "Don't ask that." Ali said as the elevator opened on his floor. He gestured for Brook to come down the hall with him. "Let's just say it's easier to steal something a second time after it's been stolen once," he whispered to her as they made their way to his room. "Your father taught me that."

  Brook stopped cold at the slam on Cale Burlington.

  "Ah, come on," Ali complained. "It's the truth, that's all. I didn't mean anything." He slid the card through the lock and opened the door to his room. "Please," he begged. "Aren't you at least curious to see
if someone took it again while we ate supper?"

  The pot sat on the hotel room table, crated for travel.

  Brook stared at it. She'd like to pull the screws from the wood, remove the padding and be absolutely sure. It occurred to her the crate was exactly the size of one of the pressure-cooker bombs terrorists were fond of using to kill innocent civilians. Was it packed with nails, ball bearings and explosives? Did someone want to get rid of her? Or were they after Ali?

  "It's not a bomb, if that's what you're thinking," Ali smiled. He shook his finger. "I know you."

  "What's going on here?" Brook asked.

  "I got the pot back. Isn't that enough?"

  "I'll take it myself," Brook said suddenly.

  "What?"

  "I'll take the pot myself. You don't have to go. I'll drive to Cairo tonight. Just tell me where to take it and who I'm taking it to."

  "That's crazy," Ali told her. "You can't go alone!"

  "I certainly can. What are you afraid of? Think it'll blow up?" Brook challenged.

  "It's not a bomb. Why would it be a bomb?"

  "I don't know," Brook said. "There's a lot of money at stake."

  "You're a woman alone driving a remote highway. There could be all sorts of trouble."

  "I'll take my chances."

  "Don't be ridiculous."

  "Were you really going to take it to the museum?"

  "Of course!" Ali answered, audibly hurt.

  Brook had heard enough. She grabbed the crate, which was lighter than she expected—this was no bomb. She instantly felt guilty. The look on Ali's face was genuine.

  "Wait," he said, giving in to her as he'd always done, "let me get you the address, and the name. I'll call him and make sure he's expecting you. It's the Cairo Museum. It's late, so it will be the back door, but it's the museum— is that good enough?"