‘Tell me about it,’ Eddie said, smirking. ‘Now I know where our little girl gets it from. It’s not enough that she’s got a great Christmas present waiting for her — she’s got to open it now, now, now!’
‘Thanks for sharing that with the world, Eddie,’ Nina told him huffily, seeing the film crew smile at what she was sure would be a quotable line.
‘Dr Ziff’s right, though,’ said Fisher. ‘We won’t get anything else done before dark, so we should set up camp.’
‘I will tell the others to bring your gear,’ said Wemba. He started back towards the river path.
‘Yeah, come on,’ said Eddie. ‘We’ll get the tents, sort out some nosh, then kick off first thing tomorrow.’
‘Okay, okay,’ Nina sighed. She gave the palace a last look, then reluctantly turned away.
It was long past nightfall by the time everything had been brought to the hilltop. Luckily, the film crew’s array of portable lamps made it easier for everyone to see what they were doing as they set up camp.
It also made the strange absence of wildlife more obvious. ‘We’d normally have every bug within five miles coming to look at those lights,’ Eddie noted as he ate. Insects were flitting around the bulbs, but only a fraction of the number he would have expected.
‘Yeah, it’s weird,’ Nina agreed absently. Something else was dominating her thoughts. They had set up their tents amongst the ruins near the top of the slope. The Palace Without Entrance loomed like a huge spectre over the encampment, its pale stone walls soaking up the spill from the lights. ‘What’s inside?’ she said, almost to herself. ‘What did Solomon consider so dangerous that he built that to hide it?’
Ziff nodded. ‘And hide in such a way that only he could get back in. Or someone as wise as him. I hope we are up to the task.’
‘I’m sure we’ll get in one way or another,’ said Fisher. ‘We’ve got a three-thousand-year technological advantage.’
‘At the risk of sounding like Yoda,’ Nina replied, putting on a growly voice, ‘technology not make one wise.’
Eddie looked askance at her. ‘Was that meant to be Yoda? Sounded more like Jar Jar Binks!’
‘Says the man who can’t do an accent to save his life! Go on, do your American voice. Give us all a laugh.’
He adopted a mock-offended look. ‘Ah’m show-ah ah dowan knur what yer-wah tarkin’ abart.’
Fisher chuckled. ‘It’s as if John Wayne himself was here.’ Laughter from the crew — with one exception. ‘Of course, a Kiwi wouldn’t know the difference.’
‘Uh-huh,’ said Lydia, engrossed by the playback in her headphones.
‘What’re you doing, Lydia?’ Rivero asked. ‘I thought Howie’d backed everything up already.’
‘I did,’ Howie insisted. While the others made camp, the young man had spent half an hour copying files from the team’s various devices.
‘I’m just checking something,’ Lydia said, tapping at her own laptop. ‘That humming noise? I’ve been trying to isolate it — and I found it.’ She turned the computer towards the others. Its screen displayed an audio waveform, a stuttering green line showing various sound frequencies. ‘This is a composite of twenty seconds of ambient noise.’ She pointed out several peaks. ‘It’s got the wind in the trees, the river, the odd bug or bird — all natural stuff.’
‘But you filtered that all out and found…?’ Nina prompted.
‘Nothing — at first. But that’s because the defaults on the software clip out anything beyond the range of human hearing. If you aren’t going to use it, no point having it — it just wastes processing power and bandwidth. But,’ she continued triumphantly, ‘the raw recordings are made at the full spectrum. So I went back to them and filtered out the higher-frequency stuff. And here’s what I found.’
She clicked the trackpad to bring up a new waveform. This was flat — except for a sharp spike at the extreme left-hand end. ‘This is the hum,’ Lydia went on. ‘The frequency’s well below anything we can hear.’
‘But we can still feel it,’ said Eddie.
‘Absolutely. It’s not loud, but it’s definitely there.’
‘So where is it coming from?’ asked Nina. ‘And what’s causing it?’
‘The second, I don’t know, but the first?’ She pointed at the Palace Without Entrance. ‘It’s coming from in there. Or more likely, under there. I think the source is underground.’
Ziff and Nina exchanged looks. ‘The Mother of the Shamir?’ said the Israeli.
‘It could be,’ she agreed. ‘And now I want to get in there to find out more than ever.’
11
Dawn broke over the thick jungle of the Congo basin, but Nina was already up.
‘Thought I’d find you here,’ said Eddie, pushing through twisted undergrowth along the palace’s west wall to find her kneeling at its base. ‘You shouldn’t wander off without letting anyone know, mind.’
‘I told Paris where I was going,’ she replied, not looking up.
‘He says you just went “hi” as you walked past and went into the trees with a torch. Not quite the same thing.’
‘I’m okay, aren’t I? Anyway, I wanted to see if I could find any sand that might hide an entrance.’
‘And?’
‘Nope.’ She retrieved a small shovel and straightened. ‘It’s either topsoil or rock all the way along. So maybe you were right about the legend last night. The Palace Without Entrance exists, but the part about how to get in could be as much a fantasy as the talking eagles.’
‘You mean they weren’t a pretty obvious clue?’ he said, smiling.
‘I know, I know. But it wouldn’t be the first time an ancient story that sounds impossible on the surface turned out to have a truth beneath it.’
‘Not this one, though. So how are you going to get inside?’
They started back towards the camp. ‘I know what I said to Steven last night, but three thousand years of technological progress can be useful. We can use the drone to check the roof for entrances. For all we know, it collapsed centuries ago and the whole thing’s open to the sky.’
‘If it is, climbing up there’ll be a pain in the arse,’ he said. ‘We’ve got those folding ladders, but we’ll probably need ropes too.’
‘We’ll worry about that if we have to.’ They saw activity through the trees and ruins. ‘Looks like everyone else is awake.’
‘Don’t think people got much sleep. That weird hum’s not exactly relaxing. I know I wasn’t the only one who kept waking up. Heard Lydia whingeing at about three o’clock.’
‘Good morning, Eddie!’ boomed Fortune as the couple approached. ‘You have made an early start, I see.’
‘Yeah,’ the Yorkshireman replied. ‘If there’s archaeological stuff to be had, she’ll drag me up before dawn’s even had a chance to crack.’
‘Where’s Howie?’ Nina asked. ‘I want to use the drone to check the palace roof.’
‘Way ahead of you,’ said Rivero, yawning. ‘He’s been getting some aerial shots.’
‘Sunrise over a lost city in the jungle,’ added Fisher. ‘It should look spectacular.’ The director picked up a walkie-talkie. ‘Howie, how’s it going?’
‘Looking good,’ came the crackling reply. ‘I’m flying orbits of the cliff so the drone can see under the treetops. Real nice shots.’
Nina gestured for Fisher to hand her the radio; he did so, with territorial reluctance. ‘Howie, it’s Nina. How much charge does the drone have left?’
‘Five minutes, maybe.’
‘I know Steven wants his beauty shots, but it would be a huge help archaeologically if you could get a closer look at the palace’s roof for any potential ways inside.’