The Seventh Scroll - Smith Wilbur - Страница 125

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"How did they get in without being discovered by the authorities? Did he

parachute in, the same way as he dropped his supplies?"

"No, said Nogo. "My informer tells us that he marched in with Mek

Nimmut, some days before the supplies were dropped to him."

"So from where did he march?" von Schiller pondered.

"Where is the nearest airfield where a heavy aircraft could land?"

"If he came in with Mek Nimmur, then they almost certainly came in from

the Sudan. That is where Nimmur operates from. There are many old

abandoned airfields near the border. The war," Nogo shrugged

expressively, "the armies are always on the move, that war has been

going on for twenty years."

"From the Sudan?" Von Schiller picked out the border on the map. "So

they must have trekked in along the river."

"Almost certainly,'Nogo agreed.

"Then just as certainly Harper plans to escape the same way. I want you

to move the company of men that you have at Debra Maryam and deploy them

here and here. On both banks of the river, below the monastery. They

must be in a position to prevent Harper reaching the Sudanese  border,

if he should try to make a run for it."

"Yes. Good! I understand. That is good tactics," Nogo nodded gloatingly,

his eyes bright behind the tenses of his spectacles.

"Then I want your remaining men moved down to the foot of the

escarpment. Tell them to avoid contact with Mek Nimmur's men, but to be

in a position to move forward very quickly and seize the dam area, and

to block off the ravine below the dam as soon as I give you the word."

When will that be?"Nogo asked.

"We will continue to watch him carefully. If he makes a discovery, he

will start moving the artefacts out. Many of them will be too large to

conceal. Your informer will know about it. That is when we will move in

on him."

"You should move in now, Herr von Schiller," Nahoot advised him, "before

he gets a chance to open the tomb."

"Don't be an idiot," von Schiller snarled at him. "If we strike too

soon, we might never discover what he obviously has learned about the

whereabouts of the tomb."

"We could force him-'

"If I have learned anything in my life, it is that you. cannot force a

man like Harper. There is a certain type of Englishman - I remember

during the last war with them' He broke off and frowned. "No. They are

very' difficult people. We must not rush it now. When Harper makes a

discovery in the ravine, that will be the time to pounce."

The frown faded and he smiled a small, cold smile. "The waiting game. In

the meantime, we play the waiting game."

The debris that filled the shaft was not so tightly packed that it

completely blocked the flow of water through it. If it had done so,

Nicholas would never have been sucked in by the current, as he had been

on his first dive into the pool. There were still gaps in the blockage

where the larger boulders had lodged or where a treetrunk en sucked in.

and jammed sideways across the width of the tunnel. Through these

sections the water had found the weak spots and kept them open.

Nevertheless, the debris had taken centuries to wedge itself in, and it

required back-breaking effort to prise it apart. The clearing operation

was further hampered by the lack of working space in the shaft. Only

three or four of the big men from the Buffaloes were able to work in the

shaft at -any one time. The rest of the team were employed in passing

back the rubble as it was levered out.

Nicholas changed the shifts every hour. They had more labour than they

needed, and changing them often meant that the men at the face were

always rested and strong, and eager to earn the bonus of silver dollars

that Nicholas promised them for their progress along the shaft.

At each change of shift, Nicholas disappeared into the mouth of the

tunnel with Sapper's steel tape and measured the advance.

"One hundred and twenty feet! Well done, the Buffaloes," he told Hansith

Sherif, the foreman monk, and then watched the water tric ing past is

feet. The floor of the tunnel was still sloping downwards at a constant

angle. He looked back along it towards the pool, and now in the

floodlights the rectangular shape of the walls was very clear to see. It

was obvious that the tunnel had been designed and surveyed by an

engineer.

He transferred his attention back to the floor of the tunnel and watched

the run of water, trying to judge how deep they were below the original

river level.

"Eighty or ninety feet," he estimated. "No wonder the pressure in the

mouth of the tunnel almost crushed me-' he broke off as an unusually

shaped fragment in the muck at his feet caught his eye. He stooped and

picked it up.

Then took it to one of the floodlamps and by its light examined it

closely. As he rubbed it clean between finger and thumb, he began to

grin.

Sloshing back along the tunnel, he yelled, "Royan!" Triumphantly

brandishing the fragment, he demanded, "What do you make of that, then?"

She was sitting on the wall.of the coffer, and reached down and snatched

the object out of his grasp.

I "Oh, sweet Mary! Where did you find this, Nicky?"

"Lying in the mud. Right there in the adit, where it's been for the last

four thousand years. Where one of Taita's workmen dropped and broke it,

probably while he was sneaking a sup of wine behind the slave driver's

back."

Eagerly Royan held the broken shard of pottery up to the lamplight. "You

are right, Nicky," she exclaimed. "It's part of a wine vessel. Look at

the flared neck and belled lip. But if there was any doubt, which there

isn't, the black firing around the rim dates it perfectly in our period.

No older than 2000 BC."

Still clutching the fragment of broken pottery, she jumped down into the

mud and slush of the coffer and flung both arms around his neck.

"Further proof, Nicky. We are on Taita's tracks. Can't you get them to

clear any faster? We are breathing down the back of the old rogue's

neck."

Halfway through the next shift an excited yelling echoed out of the

mouth of the tunnel, and Nicholas hurried back down to the face.

"What is it, Hansith?" he demanded in Arabic of the foreman monk. "What

are you shouting about?

"We have broken through, effendi." Hansith Sherif grinned at him, his

teeth gleaming in his black and mudsmeared face. Nicholas eagerly pushed

his way through the workmen. They had levered a huge round boulder out

of the pack, and beyond it lay an opening. He shone his electric torch

through this window in the wall, but could make out very little

except-empty black space.

Stepping back, he slapped the monk on the back.

"Well done, Hansith. A dollar bonus for every man in the team. But keep

them working! Clear away all this rubbish." But it was not as easily

done as he had ordered. The shifts changed twice more before the shaft

was cleared completely of the last of the extraneous rubble and broken

rock. Only then could Nicholas and Royan stand in the threshold of the

cavern beyond the tunnel.

"What has happened here? What has caused this?" Royan's voice was

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