Read Online Pyramid: A Novel (Jack Howard Series Book 8) by David Gibbins - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: David Gibbins
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sharpshooter might creep up and lie undetected, awaiting the right moment.”
“I know for a fact that Mayne met Gordon in Khartoum the morning of his death.”
“You know this for a fact? How so?”
Jones checked himself; he had revealed enough. “I’ve spent a lot of time amongst Arabs since then, and heard firsthand from men who were in Khartoum that day.”
“Was Mayne alone in his enterprise?”
Jones paused. “I did not see him depart for Khartoum from Wadi Halfa, where he went to be told of his mission by Lord Wolseley. I last saw him the day before on the Nile, where he left me with his belongings. That’s when he gave me the inscribed stone that he and his fellow officers had found in the crocodile temple beside the pool, with the radiating sun symbol of the pharaohAkhenaten that he had recognized as the plan of something underground, with the three temples at Giza clearly shown.”
“The artifact that brought us here,” Chaillé-Long exclaimed, taking another draw. “The ancient map to something hidden beneath the very feet of all those many who have tramped the plateau of Giza seeking treasures, little knowing what might lie below.”
He clamped his cheroot hard, and then removed it and picked out a piece of tobacco from between his teeth. He looked to the deck, and then at Jones again. “Did the thought ever occur to you,” he said quietly, “that Gordon alive in the hands of the Mahdi would have been a grave embarrassment to the British, a death knell for the Gladstone government, a fatal dent in the prestige of the empire? Gordon alive, a Christian martyr abandoned to the forces of jihad, or Gordon alive, a willing partner of the Mahdi, a man so disgusted by the failure of his compatriots to rescue the people of the Sudan that he would cast his lot with the enemy? Would not such a man have been a prime target for assassination?”
Jones kept his eyes glued on the waters below the riverbank. “Thoughts are for officers, Colonel. I’m just a lowly sapper.”
Chaillé-Long thought for a moment, shook his head, then flicked his butt into the river. He leaned back and smiled. “But not any longer, it seems. You say you’ve been associating with Arabs. Tell me, Jones, are you a deserter?”
Jones coughed. “Before Major Mayne left on his mission to Khartoum, he arranged for me to return to the railway construction unit that I’d been working with when I first arrived in Egypt after service in India. He thought railway construction would be safer and would see me through the campaign. He was probably right, but as far as I could see, neither the railway nor the river expedition were ever going to reach General Gordon in time, so I tossed a coin and stayed on the river. Everythingwas going swimmingly until the Mahdi’s boys finally caught up with us at a place called Kirkeban and there was a terrible twenty-minute battle. One moment I was bayoneting and bludgeoning dervishes, and the next thing I knew I was floating down the river all alone, with only the corpses of my mates for company. I fetched up at the same pool where the major had found the crocodile temple and the clue in the inscription that he gave me for safekeeping. I stayed there for days, weeks, living off abandoned supplies. I’d been knocked on the head and was half-crazed. We’d heard rumors of a giant crocodile in the pool, and I became obsessed with the idea of catching it, conceiving all manner of devices to do so. The Leviathan, we’d called it, after the biblical monster. Then Kitchener and his camel troops arrived, and seeing them put some sense into me. You know Kitchener?”
Chaillé-Long nodded. “Rising star of the Egyptian army. The man who has sworn to avenge Gordon.”
“I heard him say it. That he’d kill a dervish for every hair on Gordon’s head. But I knew that could only be a long time in the future. It was Kitchener himself who told me that Gordon had been killed and that the British force was
“I know for a fact that Mayne met Gordon in Khartoum the morning of his death.”
“You know this for a fact? How so?”
Jones checked himself; he had revealed enough. “I’ve spent a lot of time amongst Arabs since then, and heard firsthand from men who were in Khartoum that day.”
“Was Mayne alone in his enterprise?”
Jones paused. “I did not see him depart for Khartoum from Wadi Halfa, where he went to be told of his mission by Lord Wolseley. I last saw him the day before on the Nile, where he left me with his belongings. That’s when he gave me the inscribed stone that he and his fellow officers had found in the crocodile temple beside the pool, with the radiating sun symbol of the pharaohAkhenaten that he had recognized as the plan of something underground, with the three temples at Giza clearly shown.”
“The artifact that brought us here,” Chaillé-Long exclaimed, taking another draw. “The ancient map to something hidden beneath the very feet of all those many who have tramped the plateau of Giza seeking treasures, little knowing what might lie below.”
He clamped his cheroot hard, and then removed it and picked out a piece of tobacco from between his teeth. He looked to the deck, and then at Jones again. “Did the thought ever occur to you,” he said quietly, “that Gordon alive in the hands of the Mahdi would have been a grave embarrassment to the British, a death knell for the Gladstone government, a fatal dent in the prestige of the empire? Gordon alive, a Christian martyr abandoned to the forces of jihad, or Gordon alive, a willing partner of the Mahdi, a man so disgusted by the failure of his compatriots to rescue the people of the Sudan that he would cast his lot with the enemy? Would not such a man have been a prime target for assassination?”
Jones kept his eyes glued on the waters below the riverbank. “Thoughts are for officers, Colonel. I’m just a lowly sapper.”
Chaillé-Long thought for a moment, shook his head, then flicked his butt into the river. He leaned back and smiled. “But not any longer, it seems. You say you’ve been associating with Arabs. Tell me, Jones, are you a deserter?”
Jones coughed. “Before Major Mayne left on his mission to Khartoum, he arranged for me to return to the railway construction unit that I’d been working with when I first arrived in Egypt after service in India. He thought railway construction would be safer and would see me through the campaign. He was probably right, but as far as I could see, neither the railway nor the river expedition were ever going to reach General Gordon in time, so I tossed a coin and stayed on the river. Everythingwas going swimmingly until the Mahdi’s boys finally caught up with us at a place called Kirkeban and there was a terrible twenty-minute battle. One moment I was bayoneting and bludgeoning dervishes, and the next thing I knew I was floating down the river all alone, with only the corpses of my mates for company. I fetched up at the same pool where the major had found the crocodile temple and the clue in the inscription that he gave me for safekeeping. I stayed there for days, weeks, living off abandoned supplies. I’d been knocked on the head and was half-crazed. We’d heard rumors of a giant crocodile in the pool, and I became obsessed with the idea of catching it, conceiving all manner of devices to do so. The Leviathan, we’d called it, after the biblical monster. Then Kitchener and his camel troops arrived, and seeing them put some sense into me. You know Kitchener?”
Chaillé-Long nodded. “Rising star of the Egyptian army. The man who has sworn to avenge Gordon.”
“I heard him say it. That he’d kill a dervish for every hair on Gordon’s head. But I knew that could only be a long time in the future. It was Kitchener himself who told me that Gordon had been killed and that the British force was
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