H2G2 Storytime III: From Prussia with Love. Part XXXI
Created | Updated May 7, 2007
Just as Fort-William was surendering to Arthur and X; far away in the Egyptian desert, a team of excavators working in shifts had cleared away most of the sand and dirt from the area around the broken coverstone.
Ody stood perched on top of a sand dune, the Sun was hanging lower in the sky so he appeared silhouetted. The stiff wind whipped his clothes around him, it was blowing from the East, there was a storm brewing. It had been getting worse all day. The light dimmed behind dense clouds. Lamps were switched on across the camp.
They were close now. So close. Ody's eyes went glassy again; he lived for this moment.
He was brought out of his reverie by the sound of metal clinking against stone; the digging crew was inserting crowbars underneath the coverstone.
"1...2...3 HEAVE!"
The stone rocked but didn't move. The wind picked up, swinging the lamps about on the wire.
"1...2...3 HEAVE!!" There was a distant crack of thunder and the granity sound of stone sliding against rock.
"Jamilla!" Ody called across the camp. He could see her running towards him shouting something soundlessly. The wind carried her voice away from him.
He turned to the dig team. "One more should do it."
"1...2...3 HEAVE!!" The Coverstone wrenched loose and landed on the floor with a thud. The men fell down exhausted.
Jamilla was fast approaching now; Ody summoned her closer with an excited wave.
She pounded up the small hill of sand caused by the excavation still clutching the telegram.
".... Ody...huff huh! ODY! ...STOP!"
"Stop? Stop what?"
"STOP!! - oh!" She crested the dune to find the coverstone freshly removed.
More Thunder - closer now.
Over the din, Ody held his hat on his head and shouted, "What’s the matter?"
Jamilla braced herself against the rising gusts. "I just got a wire - it's from the Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities - it says were to cease excavating immediately! They're sending someone!"
"What?!" shouted Ody, "We have clearance!"
"It's been revoked!"
"But we just got it open!"
"We can't go inside!"
Ody looked at the hole - and across the concerned faces of his team and reached a decision.
"I never got that message. I have to know what's in here. I'm going down."
"No!" Jamilla held his arm firmly.
Ody turned.
"Not without me you don't!" The wind was deafening she had to shout to be heard: "I'm your goddamn partner!"
Back in the Hotel Room in Cairo. Daltmooreby looked satisfied. Sleep look disgruntled and Daltmooreby was explaining something to him.
"We couldn't have just waltzed into that camp" we needed a pre-text for a visit."
"I think you're just afraid of your son finding out who you are." Sleep said.
Daltmooreby sneered a little but didn't let Slepp know how close to the bone that his remark had cut.
By tapping into the telephone network I've been able to send them an "official communiqué" They'll be expecting me. I'll give them until tonight and turn up annannounced. Then I can spin the whatever yarn I like, if they think I'm from the Government they’ll be in fear of loosing their visas. That would put their work in jeopardy and it gives me a bargaining chip to force them give us what we need. Any questions?"
Slepp eventually nodded out of begrudging professional courtesy. "You are ruthless."
"Yes. Yes I am."
In the middle of the storm, there arrived a still calm, in some ways this was worse, a pregnant pause of expectation.
Beneath the cloud, darkness was growing. Torches had been brought and ropes lowered into the hole beneath the coverstone.
There was now no light. Ody speculated there was something, reflective inside, it shone when the sun was on it, but at night was hidden in the gloom of the chamber.
Jamilla was with him.
"Ready?" he asked.
"Always." She broke open a few chemical glow sticks which glowed firecly white and then she tossed them in. Immediately the blue glow returned, shimmering and undulating, like, like....water.
"Water." said Ody that was what the light had reminded him of, sunlight reflecting on water.
Jamilla peered over the edge. "Don't look."
Ody did and regretted it.
"Pilchards!" I HATE pilchards! writhing in discomfort.
"I don't understand" said Jamila obsessed with the curious architecture...There appears to be a water channel of some sort. it must lead to an underground spring. Perhaps that's why the settlement was built here."
"Pilchards!" Ody groaned ignoring ths reasonable line of questioning. "Why did it have to be Pilchards?" addressing The Gods to no avail.
"My guess is they swam up the stream, there's probably a large body of salt water near here. I don't know how they got here from The Med." Jamila contineued her analysis.
She cracked open another glow stick and dropped it in. As she did so she noticed something about the wide, deep trough that the water flowed into, the way it...sparkled.
"Ody...c'mere"
Ody finished mentally visualising stamping on the last Pilchard in History.
"What is it?"
"We have to get down there...look at that trough...do you see it?
"you mean the - is that?"
"I think...I think it is." she grinned excitedly. "This is the find of the century. Quickly - before the ministry get here and take over - I want to take a closer look."
Gathering her rappelling line, she hooked on the grip, and clipped the rope onto the hook that she'd had bored into the floor. Walking backwards and unfurling handfuls of rope, she perched on the edge, he boots sticking upright, gave Ody a wink and said "Are you coming?" and jumped in.
Ody's fingers gripped the edge and he prised them away. "Pilchards." he mumbled "I hate those oily little guys!"
He hooked on the rope, gathered his rappel and jumped down after Jamilla.
It was pitch black inside, only small areas of illumination gave any perspective to the darkness at all, like for instance that there was a floor not an infinite depth of nothingness.
Ody could see a Jamilla up ahead, She was already exploring and holding another glow stick above her head.
Ody's feet touch the floor, which felt hard and smooth, he looked up to the window of the real world, a square of darkening blue above.
"Oh my God!" said Jamilla from across the room by the water-trough.
Ody unclipped himself, broke open a glow stick and went to her.
"I - I think this is... I think it is -"
"Diamond." said Ody crouching down on one knee. The trough was transparent from the most part, the pilchards could be seen swimming around in the pool. It was facetted though and refracted light oddly.
"This is incredible!" said Jamilla in awe, not daring to place her hands on or anywhere near it.
There was a patina of blue light hovering around the trough giving it an unusual halo-like corona. Ody was turning his head this way and that, moving the glow-stick experimentally. "It's not pure carbon, it must have a heavy boron element in there too. It's why it glows blue."
He stood up and went over to the hole with the rappelling ropes. He whistled up and heads appeared. "Send down some portable lamps, we'll need more light in here!"
The heads disappeared.
Ody unclipped a torch from his waist and danced it across the room - it was larger than he'd expected the far side just kept on going.
Past Jamilla there was an alter of some kind, Ody walked up some steps while Jamilla continued to stare at the...fish.
Between two marble pillars, there was a plinth and as Ody raised up his torch he could see an inscription carved into the ancient stone.
'The expiration date of this fish is past, stand ye by the next jewelled vein, beneath the sky-light.'
'No, no!' he'd mistranslated something.
He tried again.
The dead...er..dying...pilchard.....bleeds beneath or under..a Turquoise.... night...light...er...Moon or Star..
"A Dying Pilchard Bleeds under a Turquoise Moon", he muttered triumphantly. What the Hell?"
He shone the torch down on Jamilla.
"Take a look at this." Do you read it like I do?"
She hurried up to him.
"An inscription!" she bent down and busily began translating.
Ody shone his torch around looking for another clue.
Something caught in the torch beam, a bright edge, but it was gone.
He waved the torch back and forth.
"Does this say 'fish'?" said Jamila working more cautiously than Ody ever did.
There it was again, but not in the same place.
Ody began to wonder.
"'Beneath'? 'Stood over', maybe?"
"Wait here." he said distantly.
He walked out into the dark aiming himself roughly at the last glimmer. He eventually found what he was looking for when he stubbed his sandal on it.
It was a rasied stone plinth. He felt the rough hewn stone with his hand. he made a scraggily scraping noise running his hand up the side and onto the top of the plith. He questing fingers found a smooth surface, not made of stone but curved and faceted. He stared intently into the gloom and could just make out as he passed his hand behind and in front of the object, his distorted fingers.
From the far side of the room, Jamila stood illuminated by glow rods cried out in a final act of triumpahnt translation: A...Turquoise...Moon?"
Ody re-appeared from the darkness. "That's what I thought too." and began seriously investigating the wall behind Jamilla.
"What is a Turqoise Moon?" She asked.
"No idea." he said half-lying.
"What are you looking for/" she asked quizically.
"Instructions." he said tracing a finger along a line of raised pictograms, showing a large orb issuing rays of what looked like light, shining out in all directions.
"Hmm." he said thoughfully and looked to his left where he espied a small, raised shelf to the left of the steps that led up to the plinth with the incription Jamila had just translated.
"I've an idea. What here. Don't move. Don't touch anything. I'll be right back." and he ran off into the darkness.
"Ody!" shouted Jamila
He reappeared a few moments later lugging in his arms a large lamp with a big bulb in it and a folding stand so it could be angled; the wire snaked off to the area beneath the open cover-stone.
He trotted up the plinth steps and set the lamp on the left shelf.
He then darted back ito the darkness and a few moment re-appeared on the other side carryign an identical lamp, which he set down on the right-shelf opposite the first lamp.
"If I'm right," he said, "watch this."
He angled the first lamp so it was pointing at the ceiling and switched it on. it made a strong, bright beam up to the ceiling and illuminate a moderate area of cavern.
He slowly angled the lamp down so the beam left the ceilign and started to point across the length of the chamber.
As the beam descended, Jamilla thought she saw something barely illuminatd in the distance, rows of somethings - they reminded her of the Terracotta army in China, but tall and glassy.
The beam struck the first plint, it refracted through the diamond orb on the stone plinth and emerged at a different angle where it met another diamond orb and refracted out again in a different direction.
Immediately the entire wall as lit up with lines of tangental turqoise refracting through countless diamonds on plinths that ran along every wall, perfectly position to re-direct a beam of light one to the next.
Jamila didn't need to be told. She scurried over to the lamp nearest her and switched it on.
The same happened again: there was a flash of light - and then before her this network of turqoise lines criss-crossed the room like an irridescent spiders web made of light.
In the middle of the room, the twin beams met each other illuminating an empty plinth.
The turqoise light from the diamond network revealed that they were stood in some sort of temple. With intricate marking runing down everywall. raised Hieroglyphs of unknown authorship on every wall, and diamonds, diamonds everywhere.
Ody and Jamilla were breathless. "This is incredible." Jamila managed at last.
"There's more wealth here than in Solomon's mines." Ody murmered uttlery awestruck.
"Where did they get them from?" There are no diamond deposit in Egypt are there?"
"Only gold I thought." Ody said gazing at their discovery.
"What the empty plinth for?" Jamila asked.
"I...I...er....I'm not sure."
"It looks like there should be something here."
Jamila looked again at the heroglypics behind the plinth. They showed this room - the network of lines, light from torches ran around the room replicating the spectacle in front of her. Eventually the lines converged not on an empty plinth but a special stone. Sacred.
"There's one missing." She said coming to the inevitably conclusion.
"Why just one?" Ody said still not quite taking it all in.
"Well they all appear to be mined from the same material this unusal blue diamond. but look, all the others refract the light at particular angles - they are cut that way. Maybe there was something special about this diamond in particular. That is why it was at the centre of the room the point at which the two beams would converge?"
"The Turqoise Moon." he said sadly.
"It would make sense."
A horrible thought suddenly passed through Ody's mind
"When is the Ministry getting here?"
"Oh God! no!" cried Jamilla, we have to hide this from them!"
"How do you hide as many diamonds as these?"
"We bury this place." said Jamila. "We know where this is, we have the original glyphs giving the location."
"We've only got tonight, we bury it."
Ody hung his head but agreed. They'd replace the coverstone.
"You tried to have us killed!" exclaimed X.
"If you will not protect me, I am already dead." Fort-William rubbed his forehead, ignoring X.
"Who?" asked Arthur carefully taking the gun from the Grand High Mage and passing it to his comrade.
"I...I can't really say."
"Oh yeah?" X, picked up the phone.
"No! Please... They would know if I was to give information that would compromise the operations."
"You will tell us what you know or so help me!" Arthur said rolling up his sleeves. "Start with Afganistahn."
"My squad and I were attacked - they were all killed but I somehow survived though I was grieviously wounded."
"I was taken to a local hospital..at least I woke up there several months later I had no memory of why I was there."
The doctors they showed me the uniform I had worn when I arrived, the medals I had carried. They meant nothing to me it was as if I belonged to another person, one I had never met."
I was discharged shortly after that and spent the next few years wandering the Indian sub-continent, Asia and so on. I had no life to return to, at least none that I could remember."
"Go on." said X
"But there were dreams."
I wandered tryign to find out what these meant. I travlled to see wise man in Phuket."
"Phucket?" queried X.
"No, no, it's pronounced Phucket." mildly embaressed.
He put me in touch with a religious sanctuary....
"A relgious sanctuary?" Arthur repeated, arching an eyebrow inquisitorially.
"An out reach for a cult as it happened."
"A Cult?" Arthur said interest piqued
"They believed in re-incarnation, matter-transference, the ressurrection of Rasputin - Arthur and X shared a glance in each other's direction - and...other things."
"What other things?" Arthur barked
"They want to rule the world. I was vengenful, bitter. I joined them. They foresaw the acension of Rasputin." Fort-Willaim continued..."as well as his demise." They formulated a back-up plan. they need something - an artefact. It won't work without it."
X looked at his partner and said, "The Turqoise Moon, Arthur."
So This Cult: Daltmooreby, Vandeveer, they all must be a part of it. and they've got Anna."
"So now we know why they were headng to Egypt."
Suddenly the phone rang. The Major General leapt to his feet quickly.
"I...I shouldn't have come here..." Fort-William stammered and rushed for the door.
"Wait!" yelled Arthur, he cursed as the table whacked into his shin trying to stand up. Fort-William yanked open the door and ran out into the hall-way of the hotel.
"X!" Arthur winced and shouted.
"Got it," X said dropping the reciever. He analysed the open window, then gracefully lifted himself through it to get to the ground below.
Arthur darted out of the door after Fort-William. In his excessive hurry , Arthur banged up against the stand on which the telephone sat by the door. Mentally noting another bruise on his shin Arthur pummelled down the stairs ignoring as he went the disembodied voice of the operator broadcasting to the corridor at large:
"...man in Lobby, message for Mr Fort-William..."
Arthur ran past an elevator already in descent and into the emergency fire escape stairwell, he peered over the railing and down the square spiral.
Outside X was shimmying carefully down a drain pipe, a secret passion for rock climbing in the crags of Scotland afforded him an excellent grip, he scanned the busy Moroccan street below, no sign of Fort-William. He edged down another few floors and wondered how Arthur was getting on.
Arthur burst into the respectable civility of the Hotel Lobby. Several guest and concierges looked up at his sudden appearance. Arthur ignored the inquisitive stares. The doors to the Elevator 'shusshed' closed. He was looking for...there! The Revolving Door, spinning fast as if someone had run through. He charged forward, and emerged onto the Street.
Within leaping distance of the ground, X saw his partner emerge frantic from the front door of the Hotel, it was then that he saw Fort-William staggering in the middle of the road, scared out of his wits, he was glancing up to the high windows, scanning the rooftops. He must have come out seconds before Arthur, X thought.
X made a graceful twist and landed on the sandy floor with a small thud and a puff of sand. He ran around the market stall and out into the road, as he approached Arthur his words came into earshot:
"...we can protect you!" he shouted holding his arm outstretched and his palm open.
"No! You can't. It'd already too late. All of this!" He gestured wildly, "They'll destroy it all. There is nowhere you can take me that is safe, It's the Poles you see it's the - !"
He didn't complete the sentence as the sniper's bullet ended his life, knocking him foward where he convulsed and expired.
Arthur and X recoiled in shock.
The street was busy, not many people had noticed.
"They got to him first!" Arthur cried out and turned to look at his partner wearing a mask of panic. "X?"
"We're in trouble." said X. Now their eyes rose, as if in supplication, to the the windows and byzantine balconies that lined the street.
The Agent's exposed position in the centre of the roadway was reflected in the lens of the sniper scope. In a darkened room pieced by slats of light, the assassin, spoke to this voice on the end of the satellite-phone.
"and what of the other two?" said the voice of the shadow.
"Kiiiill theeeem both." came the instruction.
"That will triple my fee." A voice, rich and textured, used to weighing the valuable commodities of extra bullets, replied
"All debts will be settled in the fullness of time."
The call ended.
Satisfied, the shadow lent forward into it's nest, it's eyes came level with the scope, taking a few moments to manoeuvre the bead of the sight over the head of one of the men stood twisting and turning in the street.
A finger reached for the trigger....
