Read Online Pharaoh by Valerio Massimo Manfredi - Free Book Online

door he was opening. It was a car door snapping shut behind him. He tried to slip in quickly; the neighbourhood wasn’t the best and, at that late hour, he had reason to worry. But an arm stretched out in front of him, preventing him from entering.
    He wheeled around to try to get back to the car but bumped into another person who was standing directly behind him.
    ‘Don’t be alarmed, Professor Blake,’ said the man who had stopped him from entering. ‘And do excuse the antisocial hour, but we’ve been waiting for you because we need to speak to you urgently.’
    ‘I don’t know you,’ said Blake in an unsteady voice. ‘If you just want to talk, come back in a couple of days. People usually spend Christmas with their families, you know.’
    The man who had spoken to him was about forty. He was wearing a Gore-Tex jacket and a fake-fur hat. The other was about fifty and was wearing a tailored coat and a fine felt hat.
    ‘I’m Ray Sullivan,’ the older man said, extending his hand. ‘I work for the Warren Mining Corporation, and this is Mr Walter Gordon. We have to talk to you now.’
    Blake rapidly reflected that if they were criminals there was no way they would be interested in someone like him in a place like this, and this convinced him to grant their request. He wasn’t busy, after all, and had no pressing plans.
    ‘Please allow us just a few minutes,’ said the man with the coat. ‘You’ll realize that we had no choice.’
    ‘OK,’ said Blake, nodding, ‘you can come in, but the place is small and I’m afraid it’s a bit of a mess.’
    ‘We’d just like to have a few words, Professor Blake,’ said the man with the jacket.
    Blake turned on the light, let them in and closed the door.
    ‘Please, sit down,’ he said, reassured by the respectable appearance of the pair and their politeness.
    ‘Please excuse our intrusion, Professor. We thought you’d be back for dinner. We certainly didn’t plan on such an unsettling encounter, at this time of night.’
    ‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Blake. ‘But please fill me in on the reason for this little visit, because I’m very tired and would like to go to bed.’
    The two men exchanged a perplexed glance, then the one who had been introduced as Walter Gordon began to speak.
    ‘As my friend Ray Sullivan was saying, we work for the Warren Mining Corporation and we’re doing some exploratory drilling in the Middle East. We’re looking for cadmium.’
    Blake shook his head. ‘My God, you’ve made a huge mistake: I’m an archaeologist, not a geologist.’
    Gordon continued, unperturbed. ‘We know very well who you are, Professor Blake. As I was saying, we’d been doing this exploratory drilling, and three days ago a team led by Mr Sullivan was coring when suddenly the ground started to cave in, as if sucked into a chasm.’
    ‘I went over to the opening we had just drilled,’ interrupted Sullivan, ‘to see what could have happened. I thought at first that it was a natural sink hole: the area we’re working in is full of them due to the calcium carbonate deposits that are found there. But all I needed was one glance to realize that this was totally different.’
    Blake’s eyes, bleary with fatigue, suddenly snapped to attention. ‘Go on,’ he said. ‘I’m listening.’
    ‘The drill had penetrated the ceiling of an underground room and the sun filtering through shone against something metallic in the darkness. I immediately interrupted the operation, moved out the team and referred everything to Mr Gordon, my direct superior, back at the camp. When everyone was sleeping that night, we went back.
    ‘It was a clear night and the chalky colour of the sand reflected the moonlight, so we could see almost as well as by day. As soon as we got there, we leaned down into the hole and lit up the inside with torches. What we saw left us, literally, breathless. We were so amazed we didn’t know what to say. Although our angle of view was limited,