They lined the bank and began to fish out the bodies of the dead eels.
"You eat them?" Nicholas demanded of one of the monks.
"Very good!" The monk rubbed his belly in anticipation.
"Enough of that, you greedy perishers." SappeT drove them back to work.
"Let's get those gabions in place before they wake up and start eating
you."
With a bamboo pole Nicholas sounded the depth of the water that covered
the entrance to the shaft, and found that it was well over the height of
a man's head. They were forced to roll the gabions down into it, and
complete the filling once they were in position. It was difficult and
taxing work, and took almost two days to complete, but at last they had
built a half-moon-shaped weir around the under, water entrance, walling
it off from the main body of water in the pool.
Using leather buckets and clay tej pots the Buffaloes began to bale out
the coffer and scoop the water over the wall into the main pool.
Nicholas and Royan watched with silent trepidation as the level in the
coffer fell and the opening in the cliff was gradually revealed.
Very soon they were able to see that it was almost rectangular, about
three metres wide by two metres high, The sides and the roof had been
eroded by the rush of water through the opening, but as the level fell
lower they could see the remains of shaped stone blocks that had
probably once sealed the opening. Four courses of them I still stood
where the ancient masons had placed them across the threshold of the
opening, but the others had been torn out by thousands of years of flood
seasons and thrown into the tunnel behind, partially blocking it.
Ea erly Nicholas climbed down into the coffer. It was not yet empty but
he could not control his impatience.
The water was knee-deep as he crawled forward into the opening, and with
his bare hands tried to shift some of the rock debris that choked it.
"It's definitely some sort of shaft," he shouted back, and Royan could
not restrain herself either. She came slithering and sloshing down into
the offer, and pushed into the opening beside him.
"There's an obstruction," she cried in disappointment.
"Did Taita do that deliberately?"
might have," Nicholas gave his opinion. "Hard to tell.
A lot of this rubble and flotsam has been sucked in from the main flow
of the river, but he might have filled the tunnel behind him as he
pulled out."
"It's going to take a tremendous amount of work just to clear it enough
to find out where this passage leads to." Royan's voice had lost its
ring of excitement.
"I am afraid it is," Nicholas agreed. "We are going to have to clear
every bit of this rubbish by hand, and there won It be time for the
niceties of formal archaeological excavation. We are just going to rip
it out." He clambered back out of the coffer, and reached back to hand
her up the bank. "Well, at least we have the-floodlights he added, "We
can keep the men working in shifts, night and day, until we get
through."
hey have dammed the Dandera river," said Nahoot Ouddabi, and Gotthold
von Schiller stared at him in astonishment.
"Dammed the river? Are you certain?"he demanded.
"Yes, Herr von Schiller. We have a report from our spy in Harper's camp.
He has over three hundred men working in the gorge. That is not all. He
has air-dropped huge amounts of equipment and supplies. It is like
a.military operation. Our spy tells us that he even has an earth, moving
machine, some sort of tractor, which he has brought in."
Von Schiller looked across the table at Jake Helm for confirmation, and
Helm nodded. "Yes, Herr von Schiller.
That is true. Harper must have spent a large amount of money. The air
charter alone could have cost him fifty grand."
Von Schiller felt the first stirrings of real passion since the "Urgent
satellite message had summoned him from Frankfurt. He had flown directly
to Addis Ababa, where the jet Ranger had been waiting to carry him to
the Pegasus base camp on the escarpment above the Abbay gorge.
If this was true, and he did not doubt Helm's word, then Harper was on
to something of enormous importance.
He looked out of the window of the Quonset hut to where flowed down the
valley below the base camp.
the Dandera It was a large river. To dam that volume of water would be
an expensive and difficult project in this remote and primitive
situation - not a project to be taken on lightly without the prospect of
substantial reward.
He felt a reluctant admiration for the Englishman's achievement. "Show
me where he has placed his dam!" he ordered, and Helm came around the
table to stand beside him. Von Schiller was standing on his block, and
their eyes were on the same level.
Helm bent over the satellite photograph and carefully marked in the site
of the dam. They both studied it for a minute, and then von Schiller
asked, "What do you make of it, Helm?"
Helm shook his head, hunching it down on his bulllike shoulders. "I can
only guess."
"Guess then," said von Schiller, but still Helm all, hesitated.
"Go on!'
"Either he wants to move the water to another area downstream, to use it
for washing out a deposit, gold nuggets or artefacts made of precious
metals, perhaps even site of the to use it for hosing the overburden off
the tomb,$
"Highly unlikely!" von Schiller interjected. "That would be an
inefficient and expensive manner of excavation."
"I agree that it is far-fetched." Nahoot obsequiously followed von
Schiller's lead, but no one even looked at him.
"What is your other supposition?" Von Schiller glared at Helm.
"The only other reason for damming the river, that I can think of, would
be to reach something that has been covered by the water. Something
lying in the bed of the river."
"That is more logical," von Schiller mused, and turned his attention
back to the photograph. "What is there below this dam site?"
"The river enters a deep and narrow ravine here." Helm pointed at the
spot. "Just below his dam. The ravine stretches about eight miles, down
to this point, just above the monastery. I have flown over it in the
helicopter, and it seems to be impassable, and yet-' he broke off, "Yes,
go on! And yet - what?"
"On one flight over the area, we found Harper and the woman on the high
ground above the ravine. They were at this spot here." He touched the
photograph, and von Schiller leaned forward to peer at it.
"What were they doing there?" he demanded, without looking up.
"Nothing. They were merely sitting on the top of the cliff above the
ravine."
"But they were aware of your presence?"
"Of course. We were in the helicopter. They heard our approach. They
were watching us, and Harper even waved."
And so they would have ceased whatever activity they were engaged in
when they became aware of your approach?"
Von Schiller was silent for so long that they began to fidget
uncomfortably and exchange glances. When he spoke it was so unexpected
that Nahoot started.
"Harper obviously has reason to believe that the tomb lies in the gorge
below the dam. When and how do you make contact with your spy that you
have in Harper's camp?"
"Harper is receiving some of his supplies from the villages here on the
escarpment. The women are driving down slaughter cattle to feed his men,
and carrying down pots of tej. Out man sends back his reports with the
women when they return."
"Very well. Very well!" Von Schiller waved him to silence. "I don't need
to know his life history. All I want to know is if Harper is working in