Part 50 (2/2)

Jack West Jr.

Lily bounded out of the car and leapt into West's arms.

'You found me,' he said. 'Took you long enough.'

'Where have you been?' Lily asked. 'What were these loose ends you had to tie up for a whole month?'

West grinned. 'Why don't you come and see.'

He led them behind the farmhouse, into an old abandoned mine hidden in the base of the low sandy hill back there.

'Later today, like Imhotep III did at the Hanging Gardens, I'm going to trigger a landslide to cover the entrance to this mine,' he said as they walked, 'so that no-one will ever know that there's a mine here, or what it contains.'

A hundred metres inside the mine, they came to a wide chamber and in the centre of the chamber stood...

...the Golden Capstone.

Nine feet tall, glittering and golden, and absolutely magnificent.

'Pooh Bear and Stretch helped me get it to Australia. Oh, and Sky Monster, too,' West said. 'But I left them all at the dock in Fremantle. A little later I got them to help me pick up a few other things that we encountered on our adventures. Wizard, I thought you might like to keep one or two.'

Standing in a semi-circle on the far side of the Capstone were several other ancient items.

The Mirror from the Lighthouse at Alexandria.

The Pillar from the Mausoleum at Halicarna.s.sus.

Both last seen in Tunisia, inside Hamilcar's Refuge.

'You didn't get the head of the Colossus of Rhodes?' Wizard asked jokingly.

'I was thinking of going after it in a few months, if you wanted to join me,' West said. 'I could use the help. Oh, and Zoe...'

'Yes, Jack...'

'I thought you might like a flower, as a token of thanks for your efforts these last ten years.' With a flourish, he whipped something from behind his back and held it out to her.

It was a rose, a white rose of some kind, but one of unusual beauty.

Zoe's eyes widened. 'Where did you find this-?'

'Some gardens I saw once,' West said. 'Alas, they're no longer there. But this variety of rose is really rather resilient, and it's taking in my front garden very well. I expect to develop quite a rosebush. Come on, it's hot, let's head inside and I'll get some drinks.'

And so they left the abandoned mine and went back to the farmhouse, their shoes and boots caked in the unusual orange-red soil.

It was indeed a unique kind of soil, soil rich in iron and nickel, soil that was unique to this area: the north-western corner of what was now the most powerful nation on Earth ...if only it knew it.

Australia.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS.

First and foremost, I am indebted to a wonderful non-fiction book called Secret Chamber Secret Chamber by the Egyptologist Robert Bauval. He's the guy who deduced that the pyramids at Giza are laid out in imitation of the constellation Orion's Belt. by the Egyptologist Robert Bauval. He's the guy who deduced that the pyramids at Giza are laid out in imitation of the constellation Orion's Belt.

It was from reading Secret Chamber Secret Chamber that I discovered a Golden Capstone did indeed once sit atop the Great Pyramid at Giza. As an author, it's wonderful when you discover something so big and so cool that it can be the ultimate goal of your story, and when I read about the Golden Capstone, I just leapt up and started dancing around my living room, because I'd found exactly that. that I discovered a Golden Capstone did indeed once sit atop the Great Pyramid at Giza. As an author, it's wonderful when you discover something so big and so cool that it can be the ultimate goal of your story, and when I read about the Golden Capstone, I just leapt up and started dancing around my living room, because I'd found exactly that.

I am often asked 'Where do you get your ideas from?' And this is the answer: I read a lot of non-fiction books, and if you read enough, you find gems like this. As a work on the darker side of ancient Egypt, with interesting sections on the Word of Thoth and the Sphinx, I would thoroughly recommend this book to anyone keen on the subject of ancient Egypt.

On the home front, as always, my wife Natalie was a model of support and encouragement-reading draft after draft, letting me off doing ch.o.r.es around the house, and most of all, happily allowing our honeymoon in Egypt to morph into a quasi-research trip!

Honestly, in Egypt I became one of those tourists who is the first off the bus and the last one back to it, and who pesters the tour guide with all kinds of weird questions. For example, at the Valley of the Kings, I asked, 'Is there a hieroglyph that says ”Death to grave robbers?”' (Sure enough, there is, and the image of it in this book is it!). And neither of us will ever forget exploring-on our own-the haunting chambers beneath the 'Red' Pyramid south of Giza by the light of a perilously fading flashlight!

Once again, thanks to everyone at Pan Macmillan for another stellar effort. I've been so fortunate to work with a group of people who can package my work so well (I really love the jacket of this book).

Kudos also to my agents at the William Morris Agency, Suzanne Gluck and Eugenie Furniss-they look after me so well! And they're just from the literary section. That's not even mentioning the cool people in LA (notably Alicia Gordon and Danny Greenberg) doing film things on my behalf.

I'd also like to thank Mr David Epper, who generously supported my favourite charity, the Bullant Charity Challenge, by 'buying' the name of a character in this book at Bullant's annual auction dinner. Thus, his son, Max Epper, is in the book as Professor Max Epper, aka Wizard. Thanks, Dave.

And lastly, to family and friends, once again I pledge my eternal thanks for their support and tolerance. My mum and dad; my brother, Stephen; friends like Bec Wilson, Nik and Simon Kozlina; and, of course, my first 'official' reader, my good friend John Schrooten, who still reads my stuff in the stands at the cricket after all these years. If he starts ignoring the cricket because he's absorbed in the book, then it's a good sign!

Believe me, it's all about encouragement. As I've said in my previous books: to anyone who knows a writer, never underestimate the power of your encouragement. to anyone who knows a writer, never underestimate the power of your encouragement.

M.R.

Sydney, Australia October 2005

AN INTERVIEW WITH MATTHEW REILLY.

THE WRITING OF SEVEN ANCIENT WONDERS SEVEN ANCIENT WONDERS.

How was the writing of Seven Ancient Wonders Seven Ancient Wonders different from the writing of your other books? different from the writing of your other books?

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