Wally stepped up next to her. “Yes, we have. And yet…” Zahra unlocked her gaze and glanced at Wally, “we still have no concrete ideas as to how the pyramids were built.”
“Sure, we do,” Zahra said, turning and heading inside.
“We do?” Wally asked.
She stopped and placed her hands out, palms open, hovering around her head. “Aliens,” she said, imitating the well-known meme.
Wally rolled his eyes and stepped around Zahra, leading the way. The two had only just arrived and had yet to go indoors. Upon their arrival, Zahra had been too absorbed in the trio of gantry cranes. Wally’s property only sat two miles down the coast from the lighthouse and could easily be seen from the shoreline. Zahra still couldn’t believe the monument had been erased from history, only minutes ago.
The driver had taken a circuitous path back to the SSC.
“What are you doing?” Zahra had asked. “I thought your place was in the other direction?”
“It is,” Wally replied, “though I’d rather not have us drive straight to it. We will come in from the south and hopefully throw off the scent of Ayad’s dogs.”
The plan had worked. They had not been followed.
Before they exited the car, Zahra called her father and instructed him and Cork to join her and Wally.
“Yeah, Dad, we’re fine. Just get here as soon as you can. I have a feeling we’ll be leaving again soon.”
He opened the door to the gray, utilitarian warehouse. They passed by a series of offices where people chatted on phones and clacked away on keyboards. The business was just that, a business. Interestingly enough, no one paid Zahra or Wally any attention, even in their current state of filthiness.
Hmmm… Zahra wondered how knowledgeable the people here were of his other dealings.
A door led them into the heart of the SSC. Forklifts zipped around everywhere, carrying anything you could think of. Not only did Wally move entire containers for companies, but it looked as if he also did some local shipping and storing too.
A man around Zahra’s age came hustling over to his boss and delivered another gut punch.
“Ayad has mobilized.”
Zahra and Wally exchanged worried looks.
“Where are they headed?” Wally asked.
“Southwest — across the desert.”
Wally ran a hand over his bald head. “They must have identified the temple’s coordinates.”
“Dammit!” Zahra slammed her right fist into her left palm. She took a deep breath and calmed. “We’re screwed, aren’t we?”
Wally scratched his chin. “Maybe… maybe not. Come. I have something else to show you —”
The door to the offices opened again. George and Cork stepped through, accompanied by another of Wally’s men. Their eyes scanned the warehouse, eventually landing on Zahra and the operation’s owner.
“Waleed,” George said, stepping over to him. “It’s been too long.”
Wally accepted George’s outstretched hand.
George looked his daughter up and down and frowned but didn’t ask what had happened.
But Cork did.
“Oi, Zahra, you look like shit! What happened?”
“The thingy fell down, and I was in it.”
Cork frowned, and Wally gazed up at the tall woman.
Zahra turned and performed a brief introduction. “Waleed Badawi, this is Cork. She’s… a friend.”
The two shook hands, and the cocky Brit elaborated. “I’m her pilot, and, if necessary, her pain-tolerant muscle.”
“I bet,” Wally said, eyes darting back to Zahra. He cleared his throat. “I was about to show Zahra another part of my operation, if you’d care to join us?”
Everyone fell in line behind Wally. One by one, four men added themselves to their group, including the younger guy from earlier. They kept their distance, though. It was plain to see that Wally was being careful. At least a few of the workers inside were more than just employees of the SSC.
Probably the people he wanted me to meet, Zahra thought, happy she hadn’t been relieved of her gun. She didn’t think anyone here would try anything stupid, but if they did, she’d be ready to respond.
Cork would be, as well. There was no mistaking that she’d be armed too.
The group headed across the main floor of the warehouse, weaving through rows of conveyor belts and sorting machines. Two additional men joined the rear of the party, making Zahra’s anxiety peak. She was about to stop and voice her worries but didn’t get the chance.
“We are here,” Wally announced, turning around in front of the wall of containers. These were heavily worn, even rustled in some spots. Zahra figured that their condition had put them out of commission.
The younger man stepped up and unlocked a stout padlock from the centermost container. He and Wally pulled open the heavy doors to reveal something odd.
More doors.
These looked new and contained a pair of biometric devices. Both Wally and the other guy placed a palm on a pad, and a blue light activated and scanned their hands. A soft clunk followed their efforts. Unlike the older doors, these slid apart into what Zahra realized were false walls. She leaned around the open container doors and saw nothing out of the ordinary. The modern doors were perfectly hidden behind what the average person would think were unusable shipping containers.
Impressive, Zahra thought, eyes wide at what was on the other side of the second set of doors.
Stairs.
The younger man spoke up. “Please, follow me.” Wally winked and tipped his head toward the entrance.
Zahra and George stepped up next to Wally. “So,” Zahra asked, “who’s he?”
“That is Ali,” he smiled, “my son.”
“Your son?” her father asked. “You have a son?” Apparently, Wally had kept that tidbit of information from George over the years.
“Yes, I do, and what lays beyond is his domain.”
Cork leaned in close to Zahra as the group moved toward the stairs. “I don’t like the sound of that.”
“Yeah,” Zahra said, “me either.”
Chapter 64
Baahir
The trek along El Wahat Road was long and consisted of nothing except shades of brown. There was nothing to see in any direction other than sand and more sand. The sky held a haze that mutated it from a beautiful blue tapestry to a yellowish murk. But even in the harshest environments, the land would occasionally offer a blemish within the, otherwise, dominating sandscape. Oases weren’t just a fictional paradise devised by a writer to torture his sun-stroked protagonist. One such sanctuary protruded from the Western Desert a hundred miles west of the Nile River.
Baahir sat behind the driver, and Khaliq’s personal bodyguard, Ajmal, eyes glued to the landscape. Baahir’s ears, however, were intently listening to the conversations emanating from the front seats. Khaliq was shouting orders and directions to his personal driver and those navigating the two large SUVs behind them. In Khaliq’s hand were photocopies of the last few pages of the Book of the Dead. If Baahir had to wager a guess, he’d say that Khaliq had probably read them a hundred times by now.
Khaliq’s men had triangulated the supposed location of the Temple of Anubis using topographical maps and charts from hundreds of years ago, as well as modern-day satellite imaging and even grainy pictures obtained from Google Earth. The trouble was that out here, the earth itself moved — the dunes constantly shifted, changing the topography and landscape, making any reasonable attempt at locating something lost to time nearly impossible, even with modern technology.