Part 3 (1/2)

He was easily the pudgiest and heaviest in the group. He had the olive skin and deep lush beard of a well-fed Arab sheik. His call-sign in his own country was the rather mighty Saladin Saladin, but here it was- 'Pooh Bear! No! Nooo! Nooo!' the little girl screamed.

The stone slid over the doorway, and despite a final desperate lunge, Pooh Bear was cut off, left in the slipway, at the mercy of the great block.

'No ...!' West called, hitting the underside of the sliding stone as it went by, sweeping the helpless Pooh away with it.

'Oh dear, poor Zahir ...' Wizard said.

For a moment, no-one spoke.

The seven remaining members of the group stood in stunned silence. Lily started to sob quietly.

Then West blinked-something inside him clicking into action.

'Come on, everyone. We've got a job to do and to do it we have to keep moving. We knew this wasn't going to be a cakewalk. h.e.l.l, this is only the beginning-'

He turned then, gazing at the horizontal corridor awaiting them. At its far end was a ladder cut into the end-wall, a ladder that led up to a circular manhole cut into the ceiling.

White light washed down through the manhole.

Electric light.

Man-made light.

'-and it's about to get a lot worse.'Cause we just caught up with the Europeans.'

The Grand Cavern

West poked his head up through the manhole to behold an absolutely awesome awesome sight. sight.

He was at the base of a gargantuan cavern situated right in the belly of the mountain, a cavern easily 400 feet high.

A former rock quarry, it was roughly triangular in shape, wide at the base, tapering to a point at the top.

West was at the extreme south end of the cavern, while opposite him at the northern end, one hundred yards away, were the Europeans: with their floodlights, their troops ...and a half-built crane.

Without doubt, however, the most striking feature of the cavern was its charcoal-coloured diorite rockface.

The rockface rose for the full height of the cavern, soaring into darkness beyond the reach of the Europeans' floodlights: a giant black wall.

As a quarry, the ancient Egyptians had mined this diorite seam systematically-cutting four narrow ledges out of the great wall, so that now the rockface looked like a 30-storey office building that had been divided into four step-like tiers. Each ledge ran for the entire width of the rockface, but they were perilously narrow: barely wide enough for two men to stand on side-by-side.

If that wasn't dangerous enough, Imhotep V had adapted this already-unusual structure into a masterpiece of protective engineering.

In short, he'd laid hundreds of traps all over it.

The four narrow ledges swung back and forth, each rising steadily before ending at a cut-into-the-rock ladder that led to the next level.

The only exception was the wall-ladder between the first and second levels: its ladder was situated in the exact centre of the cavern, equidistant from the northern and southern entrances, as if Imhotep V was encouraging a race between rival parties who arrived at the same time.

Since each narrow ledge was cut from pure diorite, a grappling hook would be useless-it could never get a purchase on the hard black stone. To get to the top, one had to traverse every level every level and defeat the traps on them. and defeat the traps on them.

And how many traps there were!

Small arched forts dotted the great wall at irregular intervals, spanning each of the ledges, concealing traps.

Hundreds of basketball-sized wall-holes littered the rockface, containing G.o.d-only-knew what kinds of lethal liquids. And where holes were not possible, long stone chutes slid snake-like down the rockface-looking a bit like upside-down chimneys that ended with open spouts ready to spew foul liquids over the unwary intruder.

Seeing the holes, West detected the distinctive odour of oil in the air-giving him a clue as to what might come out of some of them.

And there was the final feature.

The Scar.

This was a great uneven crevice that ran all the way down the rockwall, cutting across the ledges and the rockface with indifference. It looked like a dry riverbed, only it ran vertically not horizontally.

At the top of the cavern, it was a single thick crevice, but it widened toward the base, where it forked into two smaller scars.

A trickling waterfall dribbled down its length, from some unknown source high up inside the mountain.

To cross the Scar on any of the four ledges meant either tiptoeing across a foot-wide mini-ledge or leaping a small void ...in both cases in front of wall-holes or other shadowy recesses.

The trickling waterfall that rolled down the Scar fed a wide lake at the base of the rockface-a lake that now separated West and his team from the European force, a lake that was home to about sixty Nile crocodiles, all variously sleeping, slos.h.i.+ng or crawling over each other.

And at the very top of the colossal structure: a small stone doorway that led to this mine's fabled treasure: The head of an ancient wonder.

Peering over the rim of the manhole, West gazed at the Europeans and their half-finished crane.

As he watched, dozens of men hauled more pieces of the giant crane into the cavern, handing them to engineers who then supervised the attachment of the pieces to the growing machine.

In the midst of this activity, West spied the leader of the European expedition, the Jesuit, del Piero, standing perfectly erect, his hands clasped behind his back. At 68, del Piero had thinning slicked-down black hair, ghost-like grey eyes, deep creases on his face, and the severe expression of a man who had spent his life frowning at people.

But it was the tiny figure standing next to del Piero who seized West's attention.

A small boy.

With black hair and even blacker eyes.

West's eyes widened. He had seen this boy before. Ten years ago ...

The boy stood at del Piero's side with his hands clasped behind his back, mimicking the imperious stance of the old Jesuit.

He seemed to be about Lily's age.

No, West corrected himself, he was exactly Lily's age he was exactly Lily's age.

West's gaze s.h.i.+fted back to the crane.