Part 30 (1/2)

'Go left and left again!' West yelled down. 'Back around the Louvre! Back to the Obelisk!'

The bus took the bends fast, and West came down to look over Stretch's shoulder.

'When we get there, what then?' Stretch asked.

West peered forward-and saw the Obelisk appear beyond the rus.h.i.+ng line of trees to their left, its base still shrouded by scaffolding.

'I want you to ram into the scaffolding.'

The double-decker bus screamed onto the Place de la Concorde, almost tipping over with its speed.

The guards at the scaffolding surrounding the Obelisk realised just in time what it was going to do and leapt out of the way, diving clear a moment before the bus slammed into the near corner of the scaffold structure and obliterated a whole chunk of it.

The bus shuddered to a halt- -and the tiny figure of Jack West could be seen leaping from its open top deck onto onto the second level of the scaffolding with some rope looped over his shoulder and climbing gear in his hands. the second level of the scaffolding with some rope looped over his shoulder and climbing gear in his hands.

Up the scaffolding West ran, until he came to the topmost level and saw the Obelisk itself.

The size of a bell tower, it was totally covered in deeply-engraved hieroglyphics. It soared into the sky high above him.

The hieroglyphs were large and carved in horizontal lines- approximately three glyphs to a line, depicting pharaonic cartouches, images of Osiris, and animals: falcons, wasps and in the second line from the very top, owls.

Using the deeply-carved hieroglyphs as hand- and footholds, West clambered up the ancient Obelisk like a child scampering up a tall tree.

Stretch's voice exploded through his earpiece. 'West! I've got a visual on six police cars approaching fast along the Champs-elysees!'

'How far away?'

'About 90 seconds, if that ...' ...'

'Keep me posted. Although somehow I think we're going to have more to worry about than the Paris cops.'

West scaled the great stone needle quickly, climbing higher and higher, until even the big red bus looked tiny beneath him.

He came to the top, more than seventy feet above the ground. The Sun reflecting off the golden pyramidion at its peak was blinding.

He recalled the quote from Hessler's notebook: THREAD THE POWER OF RA THROUGH THE EYES OF.

GREAT RAMESES'S TOWERING NEEDLES, FROM THE SECOND OWL ON THE FIRST.

TO THE THIRD ON THE SECOND ....

... WHEREBY ISKENDER'S FINAL RESTING PLACE WILL BE REVEALED.

'The third owl on the second obelisk,' he said aloud.

Sure enough, on the second line of this obelisk-the second obelisk from Luxor-there were three carved owls standing side-by-side.

And near the head of the third one was a small circle depicting the Sun.

He imagined that very few people in history had actually seen this carving up close, since it was designed to sit so high above the populace-but up close, the carved image of the disc-like Sun looked odd, as if it were not a carved image but rather ...well ...a plug plug in the stone. in the stone.

West grabbed the plug and pulled it free- -to reveal a horizontal cavity roughly two fingers wide and perfectly round in shape, that bored right through right through the Obelisk. the Obelisk.

Like a kid scaling a coconut tree, West clambered around the other side of the Obelisk's peak, where he found and extracted a second matching plug and suddenly, looking through the bore-hole, he could see right through the ancient Obelisk!

'West! Hurry! The cops are almost here...'

West ignored him, yanked from his jacket two high-tech devices: a laser altimeter, to measure the exact height of the bore-hole, and a digital surveyor's inclinometer, to measure the exact angle of the bore-hole, both vertically and laterally.

With these measurements, he could then go to Luxor in Egypt and recreate this obelisk 'virtually', and thus deduce the location of Alexander the Great's Tomb.

His altimeter beeped. Got the height.

He aimed his inclinometer through the bore-hole. It beeped. Got the angles.

Go!

And he was away, sliding down the Obelisk with his feet splayed wide, like a fireman shooting down a ladder.

His feet hit the scaffolding just as six cop cars screeched to a halt around the perimeter of the Place de la Concorde and disgorged a dozen cap-wearing Parisian cops.

'Stretch! Fire her up! Get moving,' West called as he ran across the top level of the three-storey scaffold structure. 'I'll get there the short way!'

The bus reversed out of the scaffolding, then Stretch grinded the gears and the big red bus lurched forward, just as Jack West took a flying leap off the top level and sailed down through the air...

...landing with a thump on the top deck of the bus, a second before it sped away toward the River Seine.

From the moment of their daring heist at the Louvre, other forces had been launched into action.

As one would expect, a theft from the Louvre instantly shot across the Paris police airwaves-airwaves that were monitored by other forces of the state.

What Stretch didn't know was that the Paris police had been outranked at the highest levels and taken off this pursuit and taken off this pursuit.

The chase would be carried out by the French Army.

Just as West had antic.i.p.ated.

And so, as the big red double-decker bus shot away from the Obelisk and its wrecked outer structure, the Parisian police didn't follow. They just maintained their positions around the perimeter of the Place de la Concorde.

Moments later, five green-painted heavily-armed fast-attack reconnaissance vehicles whooshed whooshed past the cop cars and shot off after the great ungainly bus. past the cop cars and shot off after the great ungainly bus.

Horns honked and sirens blared as the double-decker bus roared down the Quai des Tuileries on the edge of the River Seine for the second time that day-weaving between the thin daytime traffic, blasting through red lights, causing all manner of havoc.

Behind it were the five French Army recon vehicles.

Each was a compact three-man scout car known as a Panhard VBL. Fitted with a turbo-charged four-wheel-drive diesel engine and a sleek arrow-shaped body, the Panhard was a swift and nimble all-terrain vehicle that looked like an armour-plated version of a sports 4x4.