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The Mustache wasn’t going to dig into a random piece of the mountain forever. Eventually, he’d figure out that he was in the wrong spot—and start looking for the right one. Adam had no illusions that the two ladies upstairs, Jemmahor and Umm Waseem, could hold off a small army of Al-Saboors. If Julian’s men realized Ellie and the other were down here, the best possible scenario was that one of the two Egyptian ladies managed to get through the fissure in time to warn them before the bad guys showed up.
That still left them all cornered in a hole in the ground with only one way out.
Past the crack in the ceiling through which they’d entered, the hallway sloped gently down, tunneling deeper into the mountain. The timeless stillness and the scent of old stone reminded Adam of another piece of lost history he’d stumbled into not so long ago—namely the caves beneath the city of Tulan.
Those tunnels had concealed secrets that had turned Adam’s world upside down—and nearly cost him and Ellie their lives.
The painted passage ended at another doorway. This one was completely covered over in plaster.
“It’s intact!” Ellie’s tone was bright with excitement. She whirled to Adam. “Don’t you see? If the plaster is unbroken, it means no one has been down here since the pharaoh’s body was laid to rest somewhere beyond this barrier. We could be looking at an untouched royal Amarna burial!”
Adam eyed the yellowed material. It still showed ridges in places from the movements of an ancient trowel. “That’s not all the same stuff. The discoloration is slightly off here in the middle. Looks to me like it’s a different compound or something put on a bit more recently.”
Neil moved in for a closer look, adjusting his spectacles. “You’re right. There’s a swath of newer plaster in the center. You can see where it overlaps some of the royal seals.”
“If a tomb was looted during antiquity, it was sometimes closed up again by the priests of the necropolis.” Sayyid frowned thoughtfully. “But the necropolis here at Amarna would have been abandoned during the reign of Ay, if not even earlier, in Tutankhamun’s time. That is a very narrow window of time for a looting and official restoration.”
“So maybe it wasn’t official,” Adam offered.
Sayyid contemplated his suggestion with a raised eyebrow. “I don’t see any seals on the newer plaster. Had it been a ritual closing, the priests would have stamped it again.”
“So was the tomb looted or not?” Constance demanded.
Adam met Ellie’s eyes. He could see the worry in them, and it struck a pang through him. He knew damned well what it felt like to stumble across a forgotten part of the past, only to find out somebody else had already come along and torn it to pieces. That was why he’d stopped putting the Mayan sites he’d found on the maps he was paid to draw.
This place—and this woman, this Neferneferuaten—were obviously important to Ellie. The notion that they might come this far only to find a bunch of rubble on the other side had to be killing her. It was killing him a little, and he hadn’t been wondering over the mysteries of the Amarna period for the last ten years.
“Somebody came down here after the burial was closed,” Neil reasoned. “But what sort of thief robs a tomb and then closes it up again nicely afterward?”
“Maybe they weren’t thieves,” Adam cut in with a spark of inspiration—and a dart of relief. “Thought we were here because someone might’ve come along and put somethinginthis tomb—not taken things out.”
“And this is the will of Moseh,” Neil recited softly, his eyes on the broken seals, “that his legacy, the gift of Neferneferuaten, be not misused or fallen into the hands of enemies.”
“But why would Moses put his staff here?” Ellie wondered urgently. “In the tomb of an Atenist pharaoh?”
“Enough talking,” Zeinab fixed them all with a green-eyed glare. “Or have you forgotten that there are men above who mean to take this tomb’s secrets for themselves, no matter if they need to kill us all to do it? We must know what is here that is worth protecting.”
Ellie cast an aching look back at the beautiful artwork that lined the hallway. “Butallof it needs to be protected!”
Adam slipped a hand over her shoulder. “Sometimes you can’t save all of it,” he said, the words rougher with feeling than he’d intended. “Sometimes you just save what you can.”
Ellie met his eyes. Her gaze softened, and Adam knew she was thinking of that other cave in the Cayo—the one where he’d fallen to his knees before a pile of shattered pots and ravaged bones.
Zeinab stepped forward with the crowbar in her hands. Neil shifted to make way for her. Only Sayyid lingered, gazing mournfully at the layered plaster on the door.
“This is not the way we should be doing this,” he said quietly.
The hardness in Zeinab’s face fell away, her eyes darkening with sympathy. “I know, ya habibi,” she replied softly. “Wallah, I wish we lived in a world where you could open this tomb with all the tenderness of a mother—but the imperialists have left us no room for that. We may only stand by to watch as they take what is ours… or fight back however we can.”
She touched his face, fingers brushing gently against the dark hair of his beard as Sayyid drew in a heavy breath.
“Let me do it,” he said.
Zeinab stepped back.
“Mr. Bates—could I use your knife?” Sayyid asked sadly.
Adam pulled the machete from the sheath at his waist, flipped it expertly in his hand, and extended the hilt to him.
