Gold of the Ancients Read online

  The Egyptian Adventures of

  Kathryn Black

  ~

  Gold

  of the Ancients

  Graham Warren

  Copyright © 2016 Graham Warren

  The author asserts the moral right under the

  Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  to be identified as the author of this work.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  www.KathrynBlack.co.uk

  Dedication

  To Renée,

  who gives me the peace

  that only true love can,

  and to my ancient friends

  for gleefully disrupting that peace

  at every possible opportunity.

  “Imagination is more important than

  knowledge. For knowledge is limited

  to all we now know and understand,

  while imagination embraces the entire

  world, and all there ever will be

  to know and understand.”

  ― Albert Einstein

  Contents

  Chapter 1 - Not Again!

  Chapter 2 - A Unexpected Death

  Chapter 3 - Lack of Sleep

  Chapter 4 - The Meeting Place

  Chapter 5 - Ancient Briton?

  Chapter 6 - Cairo, the City

  Chapter 7 - Hacker One

  Chapter 8 - Coffee, Cake and Code

  Chapter 9 - Quotations!

  Chapter 10 - Danger in the Desert

  Chapter 11 - Cairo, the Person

  Chapter 12 - All That Glitters

  Chapter 13 - Back in the Bar

  Chapter 14 - Which Way to Tanis?

  Chapter 15 - Could It Get Any Worse?

  Chapter 16 - Confusion and Chaos

  Chapter 17 - Desert Disaster

  Chapter 18 - A Big Operation

  Chapter 19 - Traitor! Traitor?

  Chapter 20 - Captured Again!

  Chapter 21 - North South Argument

  Chapter 22 - Red Wine and Revelations

  Chapter 23 - I Can’t Get Involved

  Chapter 24 - I Am Involved!

  Chapter 25 - Captured!

  Chapter 26 - Suicide and Magic

  Chapter 27 - Privileged

  Chapter 28 - The Bond of Friendship

  Chapter 29 - Under the Sea

  Chapter 30 - Kate’s Worst Fear

  Chapter 31 - Lovely Boating Weather

  Chapter 32 - The Dressing Gown

  Chapter 33 - A Trip to the Cinema!

  Chapter 34 - She Lives Down There, Kid!

  Chapter 35 - Cairo’s Confusion

  Chapter 36 - That Changes Things

  Chapter 37 - Falling Into Thin Air

  Chapter 38 - It’s all in the Voice

  Chapter 39 - Cleopatra’s Invite

  Chapter 40 - Cleopatra’s Banquet

  Chapter 41 - What is it with Plans?

  Chapter 42 - Home Sweet Home?

  Chronology

  Also from this Author

  Chapter 1

  -

  Not Again!

  “Turn right at the end,” Alex shouted to Emmy, who was several paces in front as they ran along a corridor devoid of doors. Running was not one of Alex’s strongpoints.

  “No, turn left. Don’t you see the sign?” She pointed to the wall ahead.

  Alex did indeed see the Emergency Exit sign and it did point to the left, however, they needed to reach the central staircase if they were going to rise above ancient ground. This, he knew, would be to their right. Alex sensed the imminent deployment of magic. There was no time to warn Emmy as there was barely enough time for action. Alex dived for the ground, his left arm at full stretch. He only just managed to connect with Emmy’s ankle. It was the lightest of light touches though it was enough to trip her and send her sprawling. The crunch of elbows and knees as she connected with the unforgiving concrete floor was followed almost instantly by a gasp. The breath had been knocked out of her. She was going to have to suffer a few bruises, though that was infinitely better than certain death, because had the magic hit its target death would have been the only outcome.

  Magic did not work with the rapid repetition of a machine gun, though it could be pretty quickly repeated by a true master of the art. Master or not, there were always a few seconds between spells, however, more than a few seconds had already passed. This was obviously no master. Alex and Emmy got to their feet, registered the dinner plate sized black smoking hole in the wall just in front of them, and ran.

  “Not this way,” Emmy said in panic between gasps. She attempted, quite unsuccessfully, to stop Alex from pushing her in the direction she had said to take.

  “But you said we—”

  “Forget what I said. You are the one with the great sense of direction.” Alex had been pushing at Emmy with so much force that when he changed direction she stumbled forward and almost fell again. As if to immediately disprove her point, the door, a short way along the corridor ahead of them, was both bolted and alarmed. They knew this from the oversized glow-in-the-dark safety sign attached to it. In the bright light of the corridor the sign appeared to be mocking them. They could not stay where they were, yet if they tried to run back in order to take the other corridor, Emmy’s chosen corridor, they would not stand a chance. It was a Catch 22 situation. Too close to avoid the magic, yet too far away to be able to take out their attacker before he deployed his magic.

  “To the door, we must go to the door.”

  “Are you crazy or what?”

  “Yes, I am crazy,” Alex said in a rather manic way as he grabbed Emmy’s wrist and dragged her along with him. It was not far to the door and upon checking they found that the sign was indeed correct. It was locked and they were alarmed. Alex stood with his back to the right of the door and held Emmy close to him. “Look scared.” Emmy turned to look at him. “That is excellent!”

  “I am not acting you idiot, I am flipping scared. I think we are about to die!”

  “Hold that thought.”

  “Which one?”

  “Well, not the one about me being an idiot. We are about to die would be good thought to hang onto right now.” Alex had just finished uttering those words as a cloaked figure came into view. The oversized hood of the dark blue cloak hid any facial features as it turned towards them.

  “I am to tell you,” said the cloaked figure in a definitely male voice. “I … I …” he stuttered as he turned a piece of papyrus around several times before letting it drop to the floor.

  “Not very bright this one!”

  “Since when, Alex, did assassins have to have an Oxford degree?”

  They both watched as their would-be assassin raised an arm. His fingers pointed purposefully towards them. His lips moved though he said nothing that was audible. As soon as his lips sealed, his hand shook, and Alex wondered if he had made the wrong decision. Doubt hit him. This had all taken far too long. Alex considered that he may well have been able to reach the hooded man before he could have deployed magic, but he was a very well built hooded man. Alex knew that physically he would have been no match for him and it was then that doubt left him.

  The hooded man’s hand shook violently before a blue-green ball of focussed death burst from his fingertips. It raced down the corridor towards them. Alex pushed Emmy to one side as he dropped to the floor. Another dinner plate sized black smoking hole appeared, though t
his time it was not in the wall, it was exactly where the electronic lock had been. They were through the door and running for the stairs, which were directly ahead, without a second thought. Height meant safety, because ancients could only walk on the ground as it was in their time. There were only two known exceptions to this, ancient gods and Akhenaton, or Dr Margretti as he preferred to be called these days.

  Alex and Emmy both lived at the British Museum, in the heart of London. Alex, officially, and Emmy, unofficially.

  It had been just over a year since Alex had returned to England from Luxor, Egypt, along with Emmy, Dr Margretti, and his father, by adoption, Quentin. His mother, also by adoption, Babs, had left both Luxor and Quentin after he had returned from the celebrations at Karnak Temple. Everyone knew Babs could not cope with the thought of ancients, because even though she was very well aware that they existed, she lived in total denial of them. Quentin’s childlike excitement upon his return to Babs after meeting Cleopatra, the Cleopatra, Cleopatra VII, at the celebrations for the removal of the warlock from the afterlife, was unstoppable. His joy and exuberance overflowed. His excitement was too much for him to be able to keep a still tongue. It was also too much for Babs, and nobody had seen her since. They knew she was okay from her ever increasing demands, which arrived in the form of letters from her divorce solicitor.

  Both Alex and Emmy had been able to ‘see’, as the ancients put it. This resulted in their fifteen, almost sixteen-year-old minds being mixed with their ancient Egyptian memories. Those memories were, more often than not, very helpful in Egypt. They were not quite so helpful in modern day London. Even in Egypt they had at times proved to be rather confusing, because they had not experienced for themselves so much of what they were able to remember.

  After discovering Alexander the Great’s gold chamber, as well as the gold chamber in the tomb of Ay, Quentin had the world at his feet. Before these finds he was the world’s foremost authority on Egypt when it was under Greek rule. This was why he had been so thrilled at meeting Cleopatra VII. It was his discovery of a general’s button with her head on it which had led to him being that authority. Not an authority he had been totally happy with, but now, with discoveries exceeding those of Howard Carter at the tomb of Tutankhamun, he had been willingly thrust into being the foremost authority on ancient Egypt, full stop. Hence, his exclusive and rather luxurious penthouse apartment within the British Museum.

  He had travelled the world in the last year. The Americans loved this quirky British archaeologist, but then so did the French, as well as the Germans. He had had award after award thrust upon him, which of course he just had to go and collect personally. It was a good job that their apartment was massive, as the awards needed a room of their own, possibly two in the very near future.

  “I really do not know what made me go that way,” Alex said as he leant on the balustrade outside of the Egyptian rooms and looked down at the wide stone staircase.

  “Did we really have to run up all those steps?” Emmy asked through deep breaths as she joined him. She would normally have beaten him. It was only the lasting effects of being winded which had slowed her down.

  “No, not really. It is just that I tend to be rather overcautious. That said, I really do not know what possessed me to walk that way back from the library.”

  “I suppose it is because nothing bad has happened since we returned from Egypt.”

  “Nothing at all has happened since we came back except lots of talk from Dr—”

  “Dr Margretti has warned us many, many times not to become complacent.” Emmy turned around and leant back on the balustrade as she rubbed her elbows. “I love it when it is like this.”

  “What,” Alex said as he turned to look at Emmy and leant on his elbow, “when we are being chased around the museum by an ancient who is throwing magic at us?”

  “No … and you know what I mean … when the museum is closed and we have the place to ourselves.”

  “I used to love being in a library, any library, and the one here is brilliant. The peace and quiet as I read of the adventures of others used to be all the excitement I needed. It really was. I never wanted an adventure of my own. I actually fought against it.” Alex paused for several seconds of reflection before continuing. “Do you know tonight is the first time I have felt alive since we returned from Egypt. Really alive.”

  “Yes … well … you may feel alive right now, but we were lucky to get out of Egypt alive.”

  “Oh, come on, Emmy, you have moaned just as much as I have of the boredom. The hours we have had to sit and listen to Dr Margretti have been beyond boring. In Egypt I was alive, and I loved that feeling.” Alex was excited and on a roll. “Think of all we achieved in just a few weeks in Egypt. That must have been a rush for you.”

  “I had Queen Nefertiti slapping me around, so my ‘rush’, as you put it, was not quite the same as yours.”

  “Point taken, but I was also in some pretty difficult situations. The thing is, we won. We found ancient gold, we rid the afterlife of an evil warlock and we met ancients and gods … We made friends of them, we were respected by them. How,” Alex searched for the right word, but felt that a much overused word was, in this case, the right word. “How awesome to be respected by someone of the magnitude of Ramses II. Me, the school nerd, the outsider. My feelings were so strong there; you cannot deny we made a great team.”

  “I thought you did not like me in that way since we arrived back in England. Am I wrong?” Emmy fluttered her eyes at him.

  Initially Alex did not know how to answer as his thoughts were not of a two-person team. Emmy’s question appeared to be serious, though the fluttering of the eyelids that went with it most certainly was not. It then dawned on him that though they had spent so much time together, especially while his father had been jetting off around the world, the closest they had come to romance was to hold hands. Long sessions, day after day with Dr Margretti, about ancients in Europe, while never meeting one, had tested their patience. The Doctor had called them ‘anecdotal stories of the problems ancients caused’, though these stories failed to be either short, interesting or amusing. In the end Alex decided that honesty was best. “I am sorry, Emmy, but I do not know what you want me to say.”

  “Nothing, Alex, I want you to say nothing.” She pushed herself from the balustrade and started to walk away. Alex took her by the arm, she spun back to look at him. They were almost nose to nose. Time stopped.

  Alex knew he did not want her to leave, he did not want her to walk away, but now, as they stood so close, he was at a loss as to what to do. He wanted to kiss her, but he also did not want to lose her. To be friends, they could remain friends forever, to be more than that, he risked losing everything when it fell apart. He looked into her dark eyes, he could smell her and she smelled of roses. He moved only slightly forward as he slid his hands up her arms and pulled her gently towards him.

  “Well … is anyone going to help me with these bags?” Quentin shouted from the steps below.

  Alex immediately let go of Emmy, turned and ran down the steps to help his dad.

  “Welcome home Mr Cumberpatch,” Emmy called out as she leaned over the balustrade.

  “How many more times do I have to ask you, Emmy, please call me Quentin?”

  “Yes, sorry, Quentin. Great to see you back home.”

  “Not for long, I am afraid. Tomorrow I must fly to Cairo and while I am there,” he stopped on the landing beneath Emmy, put his four cases down and caught his breath. Alex picked up two of the cases and started back up the stairs. “While I am there,” he said with renewed energy, “I will take the opportunity to fly down to Thebes. I am desperate to see how they are getting on. Do you know, I have not been back there for just over a year?” He picked up his remaining two cases and slowly made the last flight of stairs.

  “Sorry, Emmy,” Alex said as he quickly raced past on the way to their suite.

  “No problem,” she thought, as his profanity upon
hearing his father spoke volumes. He had wanted to kiss her.

  Chapter 2

  -

  A Unexpected Death

  “Are you coming in to have a coffee with us?” Quentin had made it to the top of the stairs, but he needed another rest.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes, of course. Dr Margretti will be here any moment. It will be good for us all to get together.”

  Emmy went to help him by taking hold of a case, but she could barely lift it. “What have you got in there … rocks?”

  “Awards. Each one I receive seems to be larger and heavier than the last. I will be okay, and anyway, carrying two cases rather balances me out.”