The Pharaoh Key

9

GIDEON STEPPED UP to the balcony and slid open the polished doors, letting in a cool, predawn breeze. The din of Cairo was already rising, interwoven with the honking of cars and the shouts of early-morning vendors setting up their wares along the Nile Corniche. Gideon gazed out at the waking city, cup of strong Turkish coffee in hand, breathing in the heady scent—car exhaust, dust, and the richness of the Nile itself, which lay like a sheet of blued steel in the distant light. They had taken a suite at the Ritz-Carlton at Gideon’s insistence—he’d banked close to half a million dollars from his work at EES, and whenever he could he would make damn sure he enjoyed the two months that were left him, no matter the cost. Garza, a born cheapskate, had grumbled a little but finally relented. It was just one of many disagreements they’d had in the five days since they’d hatched this plan—and getting to Cairo, Gideon knew, was the easy part.

And now Gideon heard a faint, singsong cry, then another and another, rising over the dawn: a melodious pentatonic chanting. For a moment, he wondered if it was some kind of musical performance, until he recalled it must be the muezzin’s call to prayer coming from the many minarets that dotted the city.

He had never been in the Middle East before, and he found Cairo entrancing: a profusion of color, sound, and exotic sights. They had arrived the previous afternoon on a flight from New York. The journey from the airport to the hotel had been wild, plunging them into epic traffic jams, where limousines were crammed cheek-by-jowl beside semi-trucks, lorries, carts being pulled by donkeys, and shabby taxis, all going every which way with no regard for traffic lights or the proper side of the street. The scene had annoyed Garza, with his mania for order, and he’d issued a steady stream of disparagement as their taxi stopped, started, and honked, the driver enthusiastically participating in the mayhem. Gideon, on the other hand, had been energized by the chaotic atmosphere.

He heard a door open and turned to see Garza emerge from his room. He looked drawn.

“I made a pot of Turkish coffee,” said Gideon. “It’s on the warmer.”

“Turkish? Any good old American coffee around here?”

“Sure, but you’ve got to make it yourself.”

Garza went into the kitchen and soon Gideon heard him fussing with the drip machine. Since departing from New York, Garza had put on what Gideon privately called his “game face,” an expression of humorless, cautious determination to get the job done. Gideon remembered it well from their previous missions. The engineer, he thought, might prove to be a challenging traveling companion.

As he mused about Garza, he understood that in many ways the man was a lot like Glinn, which perhaps explained the depth of the engineer’s resentment. Strange that, after several missions with Garza, Gideon still didn’t know much about his background, beyond the fact that Garza and Glinn were in the Rangers together, coming up through Airborne, and that Garza had been Glinn’s second in command. The engineer had always presented a taciturn, gruff exterior and openly disapproved of Gideon’s way of doing things. In the beginning, he’d even opposed Glinn’s hiring of Gideon. This disapproval had slowly ebbed during their ops together, and at times the man seemed capable of surprising acts of independence and rare courage—his commandeering of the chopper during the Lost Island mission, for example.

He heard footsteps and Garza returned from the kitchen carrying a steaming mug of coffee. He held a manila folder in his hand.

“What’s that?”

“Couldn’t sleep,” Garza replied. “Jet lag. So I put the time to good use.” He handed Gideon the folder. “Background on our destination, the Hala’ib Triangle. It’s going to be quite a trek, and we still have to determine the optimal form of travel.”

Gideon opened the folder. There were printed maps, topographic and geological charts, and descriptive text. He flipped through it, impressed. Classic Garza. While there were drawbacks to traveling with him, there were also pluses. The guy was an Eagle Scout, always prepared. “Let’s order up some breakfast from room service and go over this.”

“Room service? Hotels like this rob you blind. A glass of orange juice is thirty-six Egyptian pounds!”

Gideon frowned. He resisted the idea of pointing out that was only three dollars. “Okay, then, tell me about the Hala’ib Triangle.”

They both settled in overstuffed chairs with their coffee. “To summarize,” Garza began, “the Hala’ib Triangle lies along Egypt’s border with Sudan. The area has been in dispute between the two countries since the British screwed up while drawing the boundaries in the nineteenth century.”

“They screwed up boundaries all over the world.”

“That’s for sure. Anyway, it’s a desert that lies between the Red Sea to the east and the Nile to the west. This is not a Sahara-like desert of endless dunes, though: it’s mountainous, cut by steep ravines and maze-like wadis. The temperature often hits a hundred and twenty degrees. Because it’s in dispute, travelers into the area are advised to obtain permission from the Egyptian government and travel with a police escort.”

“What? We have to hire police? That isn’t going to work!”

Garza allowed himself a cynical smile. “Of course not. We’ll find a way around it. Egypt is a country where much can be accomplished with baksheesh.”

“Baksheesh? You mean bribes?”

“Never call it a bribe. It’s a monetary favor—a tip, so to speak—to establish goodwill and a sign of respect.”

“Gotcha.”

“Our ultimate destination lies inside the Proscribed Zone—unfortunately.”

“Which is?”

Garza reached over and pulled out a topographic map. “It’s this region, here, in the southwestern part of the triangle. As you can see, it’s dominated by a great mountain called Gebel Umm, which means in Arabic ‘the Mother of Mountains.’”

“Christ.” Gideon stared at the region, dense with topographic lines.

“It’s incredibly forbidding. There’s a maze of serpentine valleys, canyons, and lesser mountains surrounding Gebel Umm. The area features a strange phenomenon called a mist oasis.”

“Mist oasis?”

“It’s also termed a fog desert, and occurs in only a few places on earth—the Atacama Desert, the Namib in Africa, and here. It’s a section of desert with no rainfall but heavy fog. The way it works is, a stream of humid air coming off the Red Sea gets forced upward by the mountains and condenses into heavy mists. These mists gather in high mountain valleys and create specialized, miniature ecosystems living off the dripping fogs. They don’t exactly help with aerial or satellite photography, either.” He tapped the stack of maps. “The word UNSURVEYED is stamped all over these surrounding valleys.”

“So our valley is cloaked in mist?”

“No. As far as I can tell it lies beyond. But we have to pass through a mist oasis to reach it.”

Gideon was almost afraid to ask his next question. “Why is it called the Proscribed Zone?”

“During the British era, in 1888, a battle was fought between Egypt and Sudan over the triangle. It ended in a stalemate, but both sides suffered high casualties and took prisoners. They faced off and tortured their respective prisoners to death, in full view of the other side, in a tit-for-tat escalation of brutality. As a result, the British declared the southwest part of the triangle a no-man’s-land, a sort of demilitarized zone. This led to a fragile peace in which both sides agreed that neither would enter the Proscribed Zone again. Only the scattering of Bedouin tribesmen who already lived there could stay. But in the past forty years, the Egyptian government has been building modern settlements along the Red Sea coast, trying to encourage the mountain Bedouins to come out and settle down. Most have done so, but it’s rumored that a few remain, stubbornly and even violently clinging to their ancient way of life.”

“Figures the Phaistos people would choose such a remote spot.”

“The ancients clearly picked the most forbidding place they could find in the known world to hide the secret of the Phaistos Disk.”

Gideon shook his head. “It really is the ends of the earth.”

“We’ve faced worse, Gideon. We can do this.” Garza put his hand out for the manila folder. “What are you going to do?”

“Do?”

“With your half.”

It took Gideon a moment to parse the question. “That’s assuming we find anything. And that it’s worth something.”

“Oh, we’ll find it, all right. The fact it’s so well hidden just shows how valuable it is.”

Gideon took a deep breath. “It’s not like I have a lot of time left to enjoy anything. I really haven’t given it much thought.”

“Well, I have.”

“Oh yeah? What are you going to do with your half, then?”

Garza was silent for so long Gideon thought he wouldn’t answer the question. Then he said: “Duesenberg.”

“What?”

“I’d resurrect Duesenberg. They made the most elegant and technologically advanced cars of their day. Individually coachbuilt to the owner’s taste. Hell, they had straight-eights with dual overhead cams as far back as the ’20s. No car in America was more powerful, more expensive, or faster. That company was run by engineers—engineers with passion and dreams. If they hadn’t been wiped out by the Depression, who knows where they’d be today?”

This was one of the longest and most heartfelt monologues Gideon had ever heard Garza deliver. “Duesenberg. I had no idea.”

Garza nodded slowly, his expression far away. “My dad was a mechanic. Liked to tinker with cars. He loved old ones best: Packards, Pierce-Arrows. There were always a couple, half assembled in the garage. He drove a 1921 Kissel Gold Bug every year in the Independence Day parade. But his true passion was Duesys. We had a supercharged SJ he’d restored to perfect condition, but he couldn’t resist messing with it anyway. He’d let me help after I finished my homework. We must have taken that thing apart and put it back together a dozen times. Three tons of elegance, but it went from zero to sixty in eight seconds.”

“What happened to it?” Gideon asked.

Garza didn’t hear. His gaze was still far away. “Nobody makes driving machines for the love of engineering anymore. It’s a damn shame, because there’s so much technology kicking around these days, just aching to be put to use. I mean, the internal combustion engine’s a dinosaur. People think electric cars are too sluggish, but Christ, look at the Venturi Fétish. Just think: to be able to combine electrical power, performance, and real luxury, for owners who appreciate attention to detail and aren’t worried about price—that would be Duesenberg today.”

There was another long silence. Finally, Gideon cleared his throat and asked: “Do you think Glinn has any idea what we’re up to?”

The faraway look left Garza’s face. He drained his coffee cup and set it down. “You saw him. He’s still coming down off his high of saving the world. Besides, he’s too arrogant to ever admit he was bamboozled.”

“But what if he finds traces of our data theft in the EES computer network?”

“He won’t unless he looks for the intrusion specifically, and he’s not going to do that. If anything, he’s still congratulating himself on seeing through our ploy.”

Gideon didn’t answer, but he wondered if Glinn would be so easily fooled. What would the man do if he figured out they’d scammed him? In Gideon’s experience, Glinn wasn’t vindictive or cruel, but he’d be a seriously formidable opponent if crossed.

“It’s not Eli we have to worry about,” said Garza with one last shake of the folder. “It’s reaching the Proscribed Area without getting executed as infidels along the way. So let’s go get breakfast at a café along the Corniche and work out the details of how we’re going to get from here to there.”