Death of a Pharaoh (22 page)

He prayed for
guidance and as he brought his palms to his face, he could smell Franz and it
felt as welcome as a newborn baby’s first breath. How could he get what he
needed without having to kill him? He assumed that most people could never
understand what it meant for two people to overcome all the barriers of
language, culture, history and even fear to lay together under such dramatic
circumstances. How was it possible in just a few hours that two strangers could
share such deep feelings? Could it be that as two men the void was so great, so
heart wrenchingly frightening that in their act of defiance against all that
society considered normal, they somehow managed to forge a temporary universe
to protect them from the harsh world outside their couplings?

Hassan had never
doubted himself before. He had even killed once without a second thought. Now,
he was not so certain he could slit the throat of a man who could use it to
give so much pleasure. Surely, what they had done to each other could only be a
precious gift from the Gods. He prayed to Osiris for a plan that would allow
him to accomplish his duty yet spare the life of the man he had held in his
arms such a short time ago.

Hassan knew that
Franz had a weapon. He spotted the pistol in the drawer by the bed. Yet Franz
allowed himself to fall asleep giving a perfect stranger all the advantage. The
actions of a foolish man or of one who knew he was safe in the other’s hands.
Where did such trust come from? He could have killed him so easily but Hassan
knew he wouldn’t. It was one thing to spill his seed on the ground as he had
with his friends while they tended flocks of goats; it was something else to
deposit it freely inside another at the completion of an act of true
friendship, perhaps even of love. They had created a bond and Hassan knew that the
Gods would forgive him for being merciful. He began to make a plan.

The nearest
message point was not far. He could be back before dawn. His camel protested
when he started to tighten the saddle straps. Her nostrils flared as she caught
Franz’ scent on his body.

“Don’t be
jealous,” he admonished her, “you are still my favorite four-legged ride.”

Hassan navigated
by the stars and within an hour he pulled up only a few strides short of the
small pile of stones that any passerby might have missed, even in the light of
day. He wrote a short note in his ancient language and buried it under the top
stone that he tilted sideways to indicate he had been there. One of his men
would see the message shortly after dawn. By the time he reported to the
village and returned with reinforcements, it would be well after noon. Hassan
turned his camel back toward his camp. He barely felt the chill of the night
air, warmed as he was by the pleasant memories of their lovemaking. He longed
to see Franz again and he prayed that his plan would work.

He returned to the
tent two hours after sunrise. Franz was awake and preparing breakfast. Once
again, he didn’t even hear Hassan until he was standing behind him.

“How did you
sleep?” Hassan inquired.

Franz turned not
with a smile but with a look of relief as if he had woken fearing that last
night had been only a dream. The Swiss stepped forward and embraced him with
the intensity of someone who lacked words to express his feelings. Hassan held
him tightly, knowing what he was about to say might destroy everything.

“Are you here to
find the mummies?” he demanded.

Franz pulled back
and looked into his eyes.

“Your English has
improved greatly in such a short time,” he commented without even a hint of
reprobation.

“That was a tactic
to gain an early advantage,” Hassan assured him.

“It worked,” he
conceded, “but the nude shower was much more effective.”

“You didn’t answer
my question.”

“Yes, we are
searching for one mummy.”

“Whose?”

“I am not
certain,” he responded, “they have not told me.”

“I believe you
seek the body of the man you know as Jesus Christ.”

Franz’s face
contorted with shock.

“Nein, that is
impossible,” he assured him. “There can be no body!”

“My people have
lived here for over two thousand five hundred years. We are the Guardians of
the Tomb of the True Pharaohs. There are over 170 mummies in the crypt and one
of them is named Jesus. He was your Messiah but he was also our Pharaoh. After
his death, a team of brave men kidnapped his body and brought it back to Egypt.
He was mummified according to our tradition and he has lain here ever since.”

Franz collapsed
into a chair as if he no longer had the strength to stand and buried his hands
in his head.

“If what you say
is true then why are you telling me?” he implored.

“I knew right away
that you were looking for more than water. I had to be honest with you to earn
your trust so that I can save you.”

Franz looked up,
“Save me from…?”

Before he finished
the question, Hassan had his dagger across his throat.

“It is my duty to
kill you,” he confessed in an anguished voice.

Franz closed his
eyes, resigned to his fate.

“But I cannot,” he
confided and lowered the knife. “Let me spare your life?” he begged.

Franz struggled to
catch his breath again. He nodded yes.

“Good there is
much to do. My men will be here just after noon. We must make it look like
there was a struggle before I captured you.”

The surveyor stood
up in defeat.

Hassan grabbed him
by the shoulders and gave him a long passionate kiss. Then he ripped his shirt
open. Franz seemed confused.

“If we put our
hearts into it we can destroy this place in less than an hour.” He winked as he
pushed Franz playfully into the tent.

He was wrong. It
only took thirty minutes and the tent looked like the aftermath of an
earthquake. The sex was more urgent this time but still as wonderful as the
evening before. After they finished, they held each other while Hassan listened
for the sound of anyone approaching.

“What will happen
to me?” Franz asked as he buried his nose in Hassan’s right armpit.

It tickled.

“First, I must
abuse you and not in that way you seem to like so much,” he smiled. “You are my
prisoner and when my men arrive, you can’t look like a she camel in heat.”

“Only if you tell
me that you love me first,” Franz insisted.

“I love you,” he
promised just before he punched him in the face bloodying his upper lip.

When Hassan
finished roughing him up, Franz had a cut above his left eye, a swollen lip and
very realistic scrapes on several ribs. They would soon bruise.

“Can you forgive
me?” Hassan begged with a sheepish look.

“I do,” he assured
him. “Where will they take me?”

“To my village and
there you will tell all that you know. Then I will ask the people we work for
to give you a new life wherever you want to go. They can be trusted and you
will be safe.”

“Will I see you
again?”

“I serve my
Pharaoh. It will be his decision. But should fate rule against our happiness
then when I marry I will name my first son Marzuq, which means Blessed by God;
just as we have been every moment since we met.”

Hassan kissed him
gently, careful not to hurt the cut on his lip. “Besides, Franz would be too
difficult to explain.”

Father Marco received a message from the garrison commander in Egypt
that evening. The capture of a member of the team was a grave development. So
far, no one had sent ransom demands. They might torture him but Father Marco
was certain the man had no knowledge of their final objective; he had nothing
to reveal. Perhaps he was already dead. The report indicated that he went down
fighting, they found blood at the scene. It would be better if they did kill
him so Father Marco wouldn’t need to arrange it himself. Anyone incompetent
enough to fall into the hands of the enemy or who lacked the commitment to
ensure he was not taken alive was not worthy of being a soldier in his great
crusade.

He dictated a memo
certifying that Franz Glauser had asked him to donate his pension and life
insurance to the Church should anything happen to him. He pre-dated it to just
before the team’s departure for Egypt. When they confirmed his death, it was
not a matter of if, he’d have the Holy Father write a personal note to his
family. His service file indicated that only a younger brother survived him.
He’d wait a month to be certain that he didn’t turn up alive in a video sent to
Al-Jazeera by some group of turbaned fanatics looking for easy cash.

Two days before the meeting of the Royal Council, Ryan spoke secretly
with Herbert.

“Was it difficult
to convince him to come on board?”

“He was
sympathetic to our cause.”

“Had he ever heard
of our organization?”

“I doubt it. For
that reason, I asked your loyal Servant, His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales
to meet with Mr. Golding to extend your request. They are close friends.”

“Is his mother,
the Queen, my servant as well?”

“My Lord, we have
had thousands of years to make certain that our people are in all the right
places. Need I say more?”

“Who would bow to
whom?” he asked. “I mean if we ever met in person?” At times Ryan was still
trying to wrap his head around what it meant to be True Pharaoh.

“Depends if the
two of you are alone or not,” Herbert admitted.

The thought
boggled his mind but he tried to concentrate on the matter at hand. Ryan
remembered reading articles about the Nobel Prize winning economist when he
boned up on commodity trading back at the hotel in Philadelphia. Dr. Golding’s
research on the impact of reduced competition in world commodity markets,
mostly a product of corporate concentration in his view, had convinced the
Swedish committee two years earlier. He was a vital cog in Ryan’s plan.

“Will he be ready
for the meeting?” he asked his Vizier.

“He has put
together a task force and they have made great strides. He will need to work
until the very last minute but is confident he will have everything ready on
time.”

“I am very
grateful.”

“The jet will be
on standby to bring him and his team to Dakar the morning of the meeting. Their
presence must remain a secret. He will brief you in private after his arrival.”

“My Lord, they are ready for us,” Herbert announced then added,
“Nervous?”

“Compared to this,
sneaking into Maria Fanelli’s bedroom for my first time was a walk in the
park,” Ryan responded.

As they stepped
outside, he could hear the sound of several djembe drums coming from the
gardens. It was the rhythm of Africa and Ryan knew instantly that it was a part
of him. Ethan, Zach and Tony waited outside the hall. He smiled at them as they
bowed their heads. He braced himself for the coming moments and reminded
himself to walk as he assumed that a King should.

When they entered
the large dining hall, everyone present was on one knee with their heads bowed.

“Long live the
True Pharaoh!” a voice shouted and everyone repeated the words together.

The Chief stepped
forward, “My Lord, your council awaits.”

He led Ryan to a
large chair at the head of the long table. The others rose and the number of
faces that he knew from CNN was astonishing. It could have been a meeting at
Davos. He recognized at least two Heads of State, a smattering of Prime
Ministers, a former Secretary-General of the United Nations and the current Secretary-General
of NATO. He tried to hide his surprise. He noticed the Attorney General of the
United States half way down the room and nodded in recognition.

“Please be seated,
Ladies and Gentlemen,” Ryan requested. Herbert sat at his right and Chief Mbaye
on his left.

“Lord Pharaoh, if
it pleases, we will get right to work,” the Chief suggested. “We have taken
extraordinary measures to keep this meeting a secret but the sooner we finish
our business, the better.”

Ryan nodded in
agreement.

“The first item on
our agenda is the report by the Lord Vizier and until recently Chief of
Security of the Falcon Foundation, Herbert Lewis.”

The Vizier stood
up and walked to a small podium to the side of a large projection screen.

“Lord Pharaoh, My
Lords, Excellencies, we have spent the last three weeks investigating the
nature of the threat that was first revealed with the murder of Her Majesty,
Fannie II.”

He hesitated for a
moment and Ryan realized that her death still affected him.

“Each of you has a
copy of our findings but with your permission, I will provide a brief summary,”
he continued.

Most of the report
was similar to what Herbert had already advanced to Ryan. It was the audacity
of the Consortium’s plans and the global scope of the alliance that shocked
everyone present.

“…we estimate that
within one year, the Consortium will control the world’s major sources of
petroleum, steel, gold, silver, copper, most other strategic minerals and 80%
of food staples such as wheat, rice and sugar. They already have significant
power over market prices and our economists estimate that their manipulations
have increased the price of Brent crude by 22% and wheat by 57% in the past
year alone. As a direct consequence, they have sliced more than two points off
global GDP.”

He paused to take
a sip of water.

“At this rate they
will prolong the current recession another six quarters. If allowed to
continue, by fourth quarter 2017 an estimated thirty nations will default on
their sovereign debt igniting an unprecedented crisis in the banking sector.
The subsequent collapse in the world’s stock markets would allow the Consortium
to acquire entire industries at bargain basement prices,” he warned.

“Ladies and
Gentlemen, they are much closer to their objectives than any of us could have
imagined. Once they reach their goals, we suspect they plan to create a
cascading series of artificial shortages that will initiate an insane spiral of
rising prices, hyperinflation and a return to the Middle Ages for the world’s
economy. Our calculations suggest that more than 400 million people would die
of hunger in the following two years and that global life expectancy rates
would decline by more than a decade. Quite frankly, we are all that stands
between them and hell on earth.”

While Herbert
Lewis gathered up his papers, all eyes were on Ryan. He was acutely aware that
this was his defining moment, just as Churchill and John F. Kennedy had faced
theirs. He slowly rose from his chair. The silence was deafening, a prelude
either to glory or to shame. He swallowed hard.

“Ladies and
Gentlemen, I propose we kick some Consortium ass.”

It was not what
anyone had expected. The members of the Royal Council glanced at each other,
uncertain how to react. Ryan waited while a nervous chatter spread among the audience.

Herbert leaned
over and whispered, “I hope that you know what you are doing!”

Ryan raised his
hands to silence the crowd.

“My friends, the
success of their immoral designs depends on the rule of supply and demand.
Right now, they are feeling confident. In my opinion, that makes them
vulnerable. Last week, I requested a trusted expert to prepare a secret report
on what would happen to their plan if the prices of one or two key commodities
such as petroleum, gold, silver or wheat were to tumble by almost 50% in a
short period.”

He had their
undivided attention once again.

“Dr. Golding,
please deliver your conclusions,” the Pharaoh instructed.

A rather
disheveled looking man in his late sixties shuffled to the podium. It was
obvious he hadn’t slept much since the Pharaoh enlisted his cooperation. He
opened a thick file and nervously donned his thin-framed reading glasses.

“My Lord Pharaoh,
as per your instructions we conducted an audit of the derivatives market for
petroleum and gold, with settlement dates in the next thirty days. We
discovered a major cluster in the period of
October
19
^th
to the 21
^st
,” he paused so everyone could digest the
imminence of the dates.

^“
My team attributes 87% of these investments
to the Consortium. There are aspects that make this timeframe particularly
interesting. Perhaps as a reflection of their growing confidence, all the
instruments are highly leveraged. There are an unusually large number of
futures contracts as opposed to more prudent options contracts and, finally, almost
75% of the derivatives due in that week are cash-settled futures. In effect,
the Consortium is vulnerable.”

Murmurs of
excitement greeted his remarks. He continued.

“At current prices
for gold and petroleum, their average profit stands at 17.3%. Excellent for
just 90 days but if we can create a panic selling market in the two days prior
to their settlement dates, resulting in an average drop of 30%, the Consortium
would be forced to finance margin calls worth at least five trillion dollars
according to my calculations. Quite simply, Lord Pharaoh, Excellencies, we
would bankrupt them.”

His affirmation
garnered a boisterous round of applause. Ryan returned to the podium.

“Ladies and
Gentlemen, I propose that we now divide into smaller groups by geographic
region while dinner is served. Mr. Golding and his team will spread among you
to decide how best to coordinate our attack with all the means at our disposal,
including every penny of the Falcon Fund.”

It was past 2 am when Ryan stood at the door and personally thanked
every member of the council for his or her contribution. The plan dubbed
Operation Baal, after the Egyptian God of Thunder, came together beyond all
expectations. The European Central Bank would dump almost 30% of their bullion
reserves on world markets in less than 48 hours beginning
October 19th
^st
. The President of the
United States, through his Attorney General, agreed to sign an Executive Order
on the same day offering to sell 63% of that nation’s strategic oil reserves;
almost a three month supply for the world’s largest economy. At the same time,
the governments of Saudi Arabia and Qatar pledged to increase oil field
production by an extraordinary 25%. They would iron out further measures in the
weeks ahead but few among them doubted that their actions would have the
desired effect. They were unanimous in their praise as they bid farewell to
their Pharaoh.

When the last
limousine departed for the airport, Chief Mbaye turned to Ryan, “That was a
masterful performance, my Lord. Your grandmother would be very proud.”

“Thank you Chief.
But we are not out of the woods yet. If the plan works, we will wound the
Consortium, perhaps even fatally, but an injured animal is also the most
dangerous. They won’t easily abandon their dream of world domination. With the
help of the Gods, we will win a major battle but I wonder at what price?”

The unanimous acceptance of Operation Baal by the Royal Council
energized Ryan and made it even more difficult for him to hide his feelings
toward Mariam the next morning as he repeated the ancient phrases after her.
The exercise forced him to stare at her luscious lips as she carefully formed
each word. He wondered what Lord Thoth would think that night when his dream
file updated.

He looked at his
watch. Three hours had passed in a flash. He was due for lunch with Herbert and
the team to discuss the arrangements for the launch of Operation Baal. He hated
to leave her but duty called.

Herbert, Chief
Mbaye, Ethan, Zach and Tony were all waiting at the table when he jogged in.

“Sorry guys,
Ancient Rites 101,” he apologized.

“More like Anatomy
101,” Zach mumbled to laughter all around.

Chief Mbaye tried
to look appropriately shocked.

“I take it the
lessons go well, my Lord,” Herbert ventured.

“Bet he can’t
remember a single phrase right now,” Tony challenged.

“Gentlemen,
please, he is our Pharaoh,” Herbert scolded. “Have you asked her out yet?”

Snickers exploded
from everyone. Even Chief Mbaye couldn’t control himself.

“Very funny!” Ryan
remarked. “Can’t a king get a little respect around here?”

“Of course, my
Lord, forgive us,” Herbert begged trying to look serious, “it’s just we all
have big money riding on how long it will take you to ask Chief Mbaye for
permission to take her on a date.”

“I need
permission?”

“Until you are
eighteen or crowned, whichever comes first,” Chief Mbaye fibbed.

“Great, how is
everything going in Egypt?” Ryan asked with renewed interest.

 “My Lord, we are
on schedule for the completion of the new tomb complex,” Herbert announced.

“What about the
problem at the current site?”

“The Guardians are
keeping a close watch on the Swiss,” Ethan assured him.

“Do we have a
solution for Mummy TP003 yet?”

Only Ethan and
Herbert knew what he meant.

“A plan is
imminent my Lord.”

“Ok, let’s move on
to Operation Baal.”

Ethan was
impressed with the Pharaoh’s command of the issues.

“My Lord, we have
moved forward with your idea of a safe house. The closer we get to Operation
Baal, the more we risk discovery if we stay here. Our people have identified
two large houses; one in the Cocody district and the other in Le Plateau. They
are wealthy neighborhoods frequented by foreigners. Both homes are modern and
surrounded by high walls. I’ll make the final selection later today. In two
days, a cargo plane will arrive with a shipment of sophisticated communications
equipment and a powerful antenna disguised as a solar panel.”