Tutankhamun Uncovered (80 page)

“Try me.”

“Done so in the past. Never done me any good!”

“Try me again, all the same. Promise to keep my temper this time!” Carter smiled back.

“Well... heat.”

“Heat?”

“Yes... heat... flame... blow torch... portable paraffin stove... that sort of thing.”

“You’re crazy. It’ll damage the metals. Crazy.”

“You don’t like it. Told you so. But hear me out. We don’t apply the heat directly. We use zinc plate between the coffin and the heat source. Zinc melts at a much, much higher temperature than gold and will distribute the heat relatively evenly over the body of the coffin and its contents.”

Carter was listening.

“However,” added Lucas, “watching the process is going to scare the living daylights out of you! Got a pencil and paper?”

Burton pulled his pencil from behind his ear, tore a sheet of paper from his notebook and passed them to Lucas. Lucas placed the paper on Carter’s knee and drew two ‘Vs’ upside down and a crude rendition of an upturned coffin resting on them. He sketched a couple of flames underneath to depict the lamps that would be used to apply the heat.

Carter regarded the sketch for a moment.

“What if the bloody gold coffin just falls out of the second? It’s as heavy as hell.”

“Won’t, Howard. It won’t. This black stuff is solid like Bakelite. Count yourself lucky if it moves at all. The process, when it begins, will be an extremely slow one. No fear of that happening.”

“Let me get this straight. We line the inside of the gold coffin with zinc. We turn it upside down, and support the outer wooden coffin on two trestles, one at each end. We drape the upper surface of it with wet blankets. We place two smaller trestles between the others to catch the third coffin. We place paraffin lamps beneath the whole thing... and blaze away?”

Lucas nodded. “Simple as that.”

“Tommyrot!”

“If it doesn’t work... you can hold my pay for this month.”

“Hmm,” Carter shrugged his shoulders contemptuously.

“Trust me, Howard. Have I ever let you down?”

“Well... no. But then this kind of problem is not your expertise.” Carter was never one to mince words.

“That is true, Howard. But I am here to analyse, deduce and solve problems. I am sure this is a viable solution. So let’s do it. First thing tomorrow. Now, how about another Scotch?”

Carter called Abdel. While they waited, Carter became pensive once more. After a pause, he straightened up in his chair.

“No. I don’t like it. Why don’t we try something gentler first? See if it works. Same basic procedure but using the sun. Gets bloody hot in the afternoon. Natural heat. The process feels more comforting to me. Let’s try natural heat.”

Abdel came out of the house with a tray upon which was a bottle of Gordon’s Gin, two bottles of tonic water, a bottle of Dewar’s and a small bowl of ice. The three of them in turn replenished their glasses.

“Have it your own way,” said Lucas after a quick sip. “Won’t work, but have it your own way. You’ll have to be careful the sun does not damage the outer shell of the second coffin. We’ll give it a try.”

The next day, Carter emerged from the laboratory tomb at around four in the afternoon. It was his turn to relieve Burton who, under the shade of a large umbrella, had been watching for signs of movement. The coffins had been sitting outside, upturned on trestles through the heat of the day.

“Nothing, Howard. Not a damn thing. I’ve touched the stuff with my fingers. Feels warm, but just as solid as ever.”

“Hmm. Lucas may be right. Cannot abide the thought of applying flame to it, however. Goes against my better judgement. Really worrying.”

“I think you must accept, Howard, that there may be no other way short of taking the entire thing to England or the United States for treatment and we know that will be impossible, let alone timely.”

“I’d better go in there and admit my defeat with honour, then.”

Carter turned back towards the entrance to the laboratory and called to Lucas, “You win, Alfred! Finish up and come on out. Time for a drink. We’ll try your method in the morning.”

Carter watched in tense horror as the flames of the Primus lamps burned beneath the zinc clad gold coffin. After two hours of staring, tension mounting all the while lest he miss the first signs of movement, Carter snorted, got up from his canvas chair, and walked back towards the tomb.

“Where are you going, Howard?” asked Lucas.

“Fed up watching, Alfred. Damn process isn’t working.”

“But it will, Howard. Just have to give it time.”

“Something we haven’t got.”

“Well, if you don’t mind, I’m going to wait here a while. Waited all bloody day for the bloody sun. Might as well give the flames a similar go.”

Carter didn’t answer, and when Lucas turned to see where he was he had disappeared. Lucas turned back to the coffin set and called for more water to be poured over the blankets. He took a glass of water for himself and manoeuvred his umbrella a little to make sure he had the maximum shade. Slipping off his seat, he dragged himself on his back until he had a full upward view of the open coffins. He refined his gaze on the open seam between the two, hoping against hope for just a tiny suggestion of movement.

He lay there prone for what seemed to be an age. Not a sign. He blinked and as he did so he thought he saw the inner coffin ease towards him. He stared hard at the rim. There was movement! Very, very slow, but definite movement. He turned over immediately, shut down the lamps, and pulled himself out.

“Abdel! Get Master Carter at once!”

By the time the panting Carter had returned to the spot, the inner coffin had already settled down onto the second set of trestles lying just an inch below.

“It’s still warm enough, Howard. We must raise the outer shell before the damn stuff hardens again.”

Positioned at either end, the two of them struggled to lift. Gradually each sensed the outer shell easing away from the gold coffin beneath it. As they strained, the lifting became easier. Abdel and another helper moved the trestles on which the outer coffin had been resting to the side so that it could be replaced on them away from the base of the third coffin.

Once revealed, the back of the solid gold coffin was not a pretty sight. Globs of the black treacle like substance lay all over it and, like long black icicles, the substance hung in straggling ribbons below it.

But Carter was far less than dismayed.

“Well done, Lucas!” he applauded as they laid down their load, positioning it securely on the trestles. “You were right. I promise never to question your judgement again.”

“Fat chance, Howard.” Lucas held no illusions.

A season almost as exciting, certainly more grand than the first, was over. Carter was glad. It had been emotionally taxing, particularly the earliest stages, and the work itself had been almost overpowering at times. Oftentimes he had fallen into bed in complete exhaustion, barely able to take his clothes off, let alone wash, overwhelmed by the responsibility, the problem solving, the immensity of the physical labour, the painstaking discipline of sequenced clearance, the long hours of restoration, the ever-present visitors of importance, the endemic politics. He should have been well used and equal to it all by this time but he wasn’t. His innate inability to deal with the whole picture with equanimity had been his problem all along, particularly in the absence of his sophisticated patron. That and the confined, subterranean labour, the very atmosphere of the tomb, had combined to make him feel positively ill at times.

And then there had been the dreams. So many of them. So real. But now, happily, it seemed that he was free of them, for the time being at least. Rising that morning, he had slept a good long night’s sleep and recalled nothing. For once he felt fully rested.

And so it was, following a brief period of highly visual and horrifyingly credible nightmares, that Lacau himself returned to the real world. He was a good deal more humbled than before; a good deal more watchful, besides. On its journey to Cairo not a single packing case had been lost. In the subsequent storage, unpacking, further conservation and display, not a single artefact had been damaged.

He accepted the experience as a warning. He would reinforce his efforts and see to it that the security of the treasures was without equal.

Chapter Twenty Seven

Mo sat on his haunches in his toilet cradling the blackened, desiccated, shrunken phallus in his hands. He’d had the thing three years now and still had not been able to get his wife, or any of his other liaisons for that matter, pregnant. The cursed thing didn’t work. How he had wanted a boy all these years. How he had prayed. Now he had by his own good fortune, not to mention the craftiness of his deceit, obtained what should have proved to have been the most potent fertility symbol of all. Nor had it done anything for his libido it had been one huge disappointment.

Unlike him, however, his wife was considerably less disappointed. Nine girls were a sufficiency, even though four, as it had been written, died in infancy. Since the latest, she had not become pregnant these last five years. The thought of producing another child after all this, whatever the gender, was unthinkable. She calmed his ravings with words of affection, and occasionally, when he appeared pretty bad, manipulated him with her hands and her mouth. Only then, it seemed, would he forget his most personal of failures.

A bead curtain was all that protected the toilet and her husband from the outside world.

“Mohammed el Hashash! Stop playing with it!” she shouted from the other side. “It’s not going to get any better. You and I, we are past it. Accept it. You should never have taken the godforsaken thing in the first place. God knows what curse has been laid upon you for the deed. Your impotency may be the least of your worries. And should your master find out he still returns from time to time, remember I could lose a husband to the rat ridden cells of the Luxor prison.” She paused to reflect a moment and her expression lightened to a wry grin.

Mo drew the curtain aside. “What are you smiling at, woman?”

“Me?... Oh, nothing.” She became serious again. “Give up your worries and count yourself lucky to be walking free after such an obscene crime.”

‘One final prayer?’ thought Mo, gazing down at the pathetic object. He thought again. ‘No, pointless.’

He got up from his toilet, went out into the street, and tossed the talisman irreverently into the open drain that ran beneath the front wall of his house. Almost immediately, and literally out of nowhere, a black jackal scrambled from the shadows, closed its jaws over the discarded artefact and ran off.

The dog disappeared into a pall of dust thrown up by a passing donkey cart. Unnoticed by Mo or any passerby, the stray never emerged from the other side.

Carter sat on the veranda of the Winter Palace Hotel, rocking gently in his wicker armchair. He contemplated his whisky. The manager of the hotel, a good friend for some years now, saw he was alone and went out to join him. Carter’s face lit up when he saw the man approach.

“Anton, you old rogue! What brings you to idle your time away commiserating with a temporary guest? Surely there is work to be done?”

“It has been a while since I have seen you, Mr Carter, and I would like to have the pleasure of your company for a moment or two so that I may catch up on your activities these past months.” He dragged up a chair and sat down. “So. What is it these days that you have been doing with yourself?”

This was an unfortunate question, since the answer that Carter felt almost compelled to give was ‘nothing much’. But he resisted this conversation stopper with another response. “Busying myself with...” He stopped in midstream. “Oh, do forgive me. Will y’ join me in a drink?”

“Thank you, no, Mr Carter. Too early for me. Besides, on duty, you appreciate.”

“As y’ wish. Don’t much like drinking on my own, however.” Carter swallowed a draught and continued where he had left off. “Busy with tours. Everyone seems to want ‘Doctor’ Howard Carter to give them a personal guide to the antiquities. Y’ know how I love tourists!”

Both men smiled.

“It is good to see you smile,” the manager confided. “For a moment there, seeing you by yourself, I thought you might be moping.”

“Moping? About what, may I ask?” Carter had no intention of indicating his real mood.

“Oh, you know... I guess nothing much, just finding and clearing the greatest and richest archaeological discovery of all time. It is a hard act to follow. Surely things must feel a trifle anticlimactic at present?”

Carter had not expected his friend to be quite so direct. He brushed it off quickly. “Alexander.”

“Alexander?”

“Alexander. His tomb. Know where it is.”

“No!”

“I do. At least, I’ve got a pretty good idea. I’m planning the excavation as we speak.”

This was a most unexpected turn of events. The hotel manager immediately pursued him for more information. “How ‘pretty’?”

“About as ‘pretty’ as the idea I had going into my search for Tutankhamen.”

“Down in the delta somewhere?”

“Exactly. ‘Down in the delta somewhere’. But don’t press me any further on this. Has to be hush-hush, you understand. Don’t want the damn tourists, or the French, following me everywhere I go in expectation of being on the spot when I make my next great discovery or trying to pre-empt me when I get close.”

“I understand fully, Mr Carter. You can rest assured I shall keep our conversation confidential.” “I always had the greatest respect for your integrity, Anton. Now...” Carter looked down at his empty glass.

The manager clapped his hands to get the attention of the waiter. “I’ll join you with one after all. Since you have faith in my integrity, have you got anything more to say on the subject?” He stared at Carter expectantly.

“I’m sorry, Anton. It wouldn’t be fair to give you any more details. Too much of a responsibility. You understand, of course.”

His friend nodded seriously. It was clear to him that Carter was uncomfortable. Anton felt happy enough with what he thought to be a unique confidence. Tonight he would have something different to tell his wife. With a little embellishment the story might take on some of the trappings of an adventure the unknown, the excitement, in any case something a world apart from the general humdrum, day-to-day business of the hotel.