treasures that he had already assembled had been discovered by other
men. This was his chance, his last chance to make his own discovery, to
break the seals on the door of a Pharaoh's tomb and be the first man in
four thousand years to gaze upon the contents. Perhaps that Was his real
hope for immortality, and there was no price in gold and human life he
was not fully prepared to pay for it.
Already men had died in this passion of his, and he cared not that there
would be other sacrifices. No price was too high.
He checked his image in the full-length mirror that hung on the wall
opposite his bed. He smoothed the thick, coarse, dark hair. Of course it
was dyed, but that was one of his few remaining conceits. Then he
crossed the uncarpeted wooden floor of his own quarters, and opened the
door into the long conference room which would be his headquarters over
the days to come.
The persons seated there rose to their feet immedi.
lately, their attitudes servile and their expressions obsequious. Von
Schiller strode to the head of the long table and stepped up on to the
block of wood covered with carpeting that his private secretary had
placed there for him. This block went everywhere with him. It was nine
inches high. From this elevation von Schiller looked down upon the men
and one woman who waited for him. He looked them over unhurriedly,
letting them stand a while.
>From the vantage point of his block, he was taller than any of them.
First he looked at Helm. The Texan had worked for him for over a decade.
Completely reliable he was strong both physically and mentally and would
follow orders without question or qualms. Von Schiller had come to rely
on him. He could send him anywhere in the world, from Zaire to
Queensland, from the Arctic Circle to the steaming equatorial forests,
and Helm would get the job done with the minimum of fuss and with very
few unpleasant consequences. He was ruthless but discreet, and like a
good hunting dog he knew his master.
From Helm he looked at the woman. butte Kemper was his private
secretary. She ordered and directed the details of his life, from his
food to his block, from his medicine to his social calendar, No man or
woman was ever received into his presence without her prior arrangement.
She was also his communications expert. The mass of electronic equipment
that occupied one wall of the hut was her preserve. He was able to find
her way through the ether with the- infallible instinct of a homing
pigeon. From the archaic art of the keyboard and Morse code 'to burst
transmissions and random switching he had never known another person,
male or female, who could match her wizardry. She was at that perfect
age for a woman, forty, slim and blonde, with slanting green eyes over
high cheekbones, resembling the young Dietrich.
Von Schiller's own wife, Ingemar, had been an invalid for the last
twenty years, and Utte Kemper had stepped into the void she had left in
his life. Yet she was more than either secretary or wife to him.
When he had first met Utte, she had been holding a very senior position
in the technical section of the German national telecommunications
network, and moonlighting as a pornographic actress - not for the money
but for love of the job. Copies of the videos she had made at that time
were amongst von Schiller's most precious possessions, after his
collection of Egyptian antiquities. Like Helm, she had no qualms. There
was nothing she would not do to him, or allow him to do to her, to
fulfill his most bizarre fantasies. When he watched her videos and she
did some of these things to him, she was the only woman who could still
bring him to orgasm. Yet even this happened less frequently with every
month that passed, and each time the spasms of sexual release she could
evoke from his aging body were less intense.
Utte had her recording equipment set up before her on the table. It was
part of her multifarious duties to keep, accurate and complete records
of every meeting and conversation. Then von Schiller looked past these
two trusted employees to the two other men standing at the table.
Colonel Nogo he had met for the first time that morning, as he stepped
down from the Jet Ranger helicopter that had flown them down from Addis
Ababa to the base camp here on the summit of the escarpment of the Nile
gorge. He knew very little about him, except that Helm had selected him,
and was so far satisfied with his performance. Von Schiller himself was
not equally impressed. There had already been some bungling. Nogo had
allowed Quenton Harper and the Egyptian woman to slip through his
clutches. After a lifetime of operating in Africa, von Schiller placed
little trust or store in blacks and preferred to work with Europeans.
However, he realized that for the time being Nogo's services were
indispensable.
He was, after all, the military commander of the southern Gojam. No
doubt once he had served his purpose he could be taken care of Helm
would see to that. He would not have to bother himself with the details.
Von Schiller looked now at the last man at the table. Here was another
who was indispensable for the time being. Nahoot Guddabi was the one who
had brought the existence of the seventh scroll to his attention.
Apparently some English author had written a fictionalized version of
the scrolls, but von Schiller never read fiction of any sort, either in
German or in any of the four foreign languages in which he was fluent.
Without Nahoot bringing the existence of the Taita scrolls to his
notice, he might have overlooked this opportunity of his lifetime.
The Egyptian had come to him as soon as the original translation of the
scrolls had been completed by Duraid Al Simma, and the existence of an
unrecorded Pharaoh and his tomb had been mooted. Since then they had
been in constant contact, and when the time.came that Al Simma and his
wife had started to make too much headway with their investigations, von
Schiller had employed Nahoot to get rid of them and to bring the seventh
scroll to him.
The scroll was now the shining star of his collection, safely housed
with his other ancient treasures in the steel and concrete vaults below
the Schloss in the mountains that was his private retreat, his Eagle's
Nest.
Despite this, the choice of Nahoot to under-take the more sensitive work
of ridding him of Al Simma and his wife had proved to be a mistake. He
should have.. sent a professional to take care of them, but Nahoot had
argued that he was capable of seeing it through, and he had been well
paid for the work that he had mismanaged so ineptly.
He "too would be disposable in time, but right now von Schiller still
needed him.
There was no question that Nahoot's understanding of Egyptology and
hieroglyphics was far in advance of von Schiller's own. After all,
Nahoot had spent most of his life studying them, while von Schiller was
an amateur and only a comparatively recent enthusiast. Nahoot was able
to read the scrolls and this new material that they had acquired as
though they were letters from a friend, whereas von Schiller was obliged
to puzzle over each symbol and resort frequently to his reference books.
Even then, he was not capable of picking up the finer nuances of meaning
in the text.
Without Nahoot's assistance he could not hope to solve the riddles which
confronted him in the search for Mamose's tomb.
This was the team who were now assembled beneath him, waiting for him to
start the proceedings. "Sit down, please, Fr5ulein Kemper," he said at