“Hang on a second.”
Her taxi was apparently racing with another through a junction and despite her experience she couldn’t help wincing as her driver swerved in front of the other to cut him up. He was rewarded with three short beeps, and he waved cheerily out of his window in reply.
“No,” she said bluntly, her mind back on their conversation. “I’ll deal with him when I get there. We’re only a few minutes away at this speed, anyway.”
“I’m sorry, honey. I love you,” he added the last three words almost as an afterthought.
“Me too, George. I’ll call you later.”
“Oh, and Gail?”
“Yes?” She heard the sound of cutlery on a plate and grinned.
“I’ve eaten your portion, OK?” He spoke with his mouth full of what she assumed was her Fish and Chips.
“Whatever, George.” She pressed a button on the earpiece and ended the call.
Five minutes later, the car came to a stop in a street round the back of the museum. The driver turned round to face her with a wide grin.
She wondered briefly if the fact that she always haggled down to half the original price meant the driver always drove at twice the required speed, but then dismissed the thought. The look on this man’s face told her he probably drove like that all the time. She paid the agreed fare, added fifty Egyptian pounds of baksheesh, and stepped out into the relatively cool Egyptian-winter evening.
Professor Mamdouh al-Misri had always been proud of his office at the Egyptian Museum. It had a decidedly ‘Old World’ feel about it: dark oak shelves covered every wall from floor to ceiling, while an imposing solid mahogany desk filled the centre of the room. The shelves were mostly stocked with academic publications. The entire bottom shelf, running along three walls of the office, was filled with over a century of National Geographic magazines. A small shelf at head height nearest the Professor’s chair contained a selection of old archaeological books from the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. All three volumes of Carter’s The Tomb of Tut-Ankh-Amen were present in the irreplaceable collection, and were themselves alone insured for over a hundred thousand British pounds.
Of course, in his few years as the General Director of the museum, the Professor had not yet had the time to furnish such a lavish office all by himself. Such a collection of books belonged not to him, but to the museum itself, and had been accumulated over the last century by dozens of General Directors, each one leaving their mark.
Professor al-Misri was more concerned with the safety of the collection, in particular the earlier works, than of adding anything specific to it himself. For that reason, he had been working with the museum planners to modify certain shelves in the office. Soon, for instance, Carter’s works would be protected by a thick layer of Plexiglas and steel that could only be opened by entering a six-digit code.
He sat in his chair and looked up at the books. They seemed so old and fragile, their spines mostly bent and frayed at the edges. The dust jackets of some were torn and partially missing. These were books that had been used countless times; thumbed-through by his predecessors, left on bedside tables at night, or lying on a desk under a pile of paperwork for weeks and months on end, and they showed their age with pride.
He thought about the Amarna Library, sealed tight against the elements, its contents immaculately preserved for millennia. Thousands of books and scrolls, more than a man could read in a lifetime, in better condition than the small collection he saw in front of him now.
He shook his head. Books were meant to be read, not hidden.
Gail knocked and entered without waiting. She found him sitting at his desk, which had been cleared of all paperwork, revealing in full its leather surface to her for the first time. The Professor looked at her blankly.
“Hello?” she ventured.
His face suddenly lit up. “Gail! Sorry, I was miles away. How was the flight?” He stood up and rounded the desk to welcome her, holding her right hand firmly and kissing her lightly on each cheek – a vestige of his Western education.
“Not bad, thanks,” she replied.
They exchanged pleasantries for several minutes after sitting down, before falling silent. The Professor looked down at his desk.
“Why have you cleared up, Mamdouh?” Gail asked.
He gave a deep sigh and looked her in the eyes. “Because I cannot lie to myself any longer. Being in this office reminds me every day of what I have let happen. I will resign in the morning.”
She was taken aback by his statement. “No! You –”
“Gail, I have to tell you the truth,” he interrupted her. “At least what little I know of it.” He fished a piece of paper out of the top drawer and passed it across the desk. “Before I forget, you may want to contact this man later; he called for you earlier.”
She read the note. Martín Antunez, again! It was followed by a phone number. Like I don’t have more important things to do than talk to him! She shook her head and put it in her pocket.
“Please let me tell you everything, without interruption, and then we can discuss things,” he said.
Gail reluctantly agreed.
“You will certainly remember when you first set foot in the Amarna Library, Gail. That day, you walked into a veritable treasure trove, the single most impressive archaeological find I have ever witnessed. Certainly on a par with Howard Carter more than a hundred years ago. But I was not entirely honest with you that day.” He paused to moisten his lips. “Months before our excavations at Amarna began, I was contacted by an American man; an old friend who studied Anthropology with me at Harvard. His name is Dr Henry Patterson. I hadn’t heard from him in years, and we spent a good hour on the phone reminiscing about old times. It turned out he was calling because he had heard of my excavation.
“I was amazed; the excavation wasn’t exactly high profile, barely a blip on the Supreme Council of Antiquities’ radar. Why would he know of it? He explained to me that he worked for an agency in the States, based near Tampa in Florida. They had reason to believe that certain finds from Amarna could be extremely damaging to the political stability of the region. How they knew of these finds, he could not fully reveal, but he suggested that his agency’s investigations pointed to an as-yet undiscovered text, somehow related to Nefertiti. If we were to find the text and reveal it publicly, his agency felt the repercussions would be disastrous.
“Of course, as I listened to him explain all of this I could not stop myself from laughing out loud. It sounded completely preposterous, like a prank call. I accused him of playing such a joke, but he flatly denied it. Instead, he offered me help. On top of providing materials and equipment to aid in our work, his agency would take responsibility for removing the offending finds in the event that we uncovered them, and help ‘oil the wheels of bureaucracy’ if required. That basically meant baksheesh. They would also ensure that no loose ends were left lying around to give anything away. You saw the men from the agency when you were on the dig, Gail.”
“The engineers,” she whispered.
“Yes, the engineers. They were attached to me from day one. I reported all of the finds to them. From the moment they arrived, I regretted agreeing to work with this agency. I always felt like they were spying on me, on the dig, and on all of my students. There was something dark, something oppressive about their presence that made me want to call him up and tell him they could leave right away. But I never did, and when I found out what they wanted to hide, I was glad I hadn’t.
“The engineers pretended to make the Library ‘safe’ for us to investigate, Gail. In truth, they went in to find what they were looking for and remove it.”