Trifariam, The Lost Codex (2012) (28 page)

“James, what the fuck are you doing?” Richard’s voice boomed out of the speakers in the Queen’s Chamber. “Blow the freaking door up! You’re wasting too much time!”

It was as if the world had stopped inside that dark chamber. His friend’s words reached him like soft whispers which he was unable to make out clearly, he could only guess what Richard was saying. All his attention was focused on the image that the camera had captured at the end of the narrow shaft.

He pored over it, comparing it to the copy he had in his hands. Although the image wasn’t clear, he could make out slight similarities between the two. The engraving on the wall was triangular in shape and they were both virtually the same size. However, the drawings inside did not match perfectly; whereas those etched on the wall seemed to be grooves made in the stone itself, the lines on the object were in relief.

What if it’s a kind of lock and key mechanism?
The idea had been flitting around James’ head since he discovered the engraving. He tried to turn them together by looking for a point at which they could join together, something he seemed to achieve when he placed them face to face. The raised lines on the object seemed to fit perfectly with the grooves of the image on the wall.
I’d better check they fit together before I smash down the wall.

Richard was back on the warpath. “What are you doing? Can you hear me?”

Although it was cool inside the chamber, sweat was beginning to run down James’ forehead. A handkerchief fashioned into a crown and wrapped around his head stopped his hair from sticking to his face. His thoughts were of course elsewhere and he couldn’t waste a second giving explanations. With a quick flick of one of the joysticks, he correctly engaged the three-fingered hydraulic arm; it gripped the triangle with ease, with a finger on each of its sides.

He immediately placed the robot back inside the hole and pushed the joystick forward, indicating to the robot to start its ascent. His grin and the brief thumbs-up he gave with his right hand were enough for his friends to understand that James had found something and was in the process of checking it out.

Thanks to James’ new-found mastery of the controls, the robot reached the top much quicker than before, returning to where it had previously stopped. Once there, the machine’s body turned in all directions in search of the strange engraving on the wall.

When he eventually managed to find it, he gently extended the hydraulic arm and tried to insert the triangular object into the marking on the wall. It was no easy feat; the process was hampered by the lack of light in the shaft, together with some interference. However, on the third attempt he managed to insert it into the wall with great precision.

Nothing interesting happened for the next few minutes. He was confused. He had imagined all kinds of outcomes: that a hidden door which led to the Secret Chamber would open, that the blocks would give way and let the robot through, or even that some compartment would open unexpectedly, dropping down the piece of the fragment they were looking for.

I was sure it would work.
Despite some disheartening thoughts trying to dissolve what little hope he had left, he tried to keep a cool head.
The piece fits perfectly in the wall. It must go there!
His brain processed all the possible solutions at incredible speed, trying to fit together all the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle.
I’m missing something… what could it be?

Clearly, if the shape fitted perfectly in the wall, then it could not be anything other than a lock and key system. The problem was how to turn the key.

He wasted more time mulling it over than he anticipated, while he paced around the chamber in a circle without feeling the least bit scared. The reigning loneliness had become his loyal ally. His friends were following his every move via the surveillance cameras and without saying a word. James was completely unaware of their presence.

I’ll take it out and then put it back in.

With a sharp turn of the joystick he directed the hydraulic arm to the triangle inserted in the wall. It was perfectly in place and the gap between each of the three sides was a mere fraction of an inch. He tried to insert one of the fingers into the crevice. He intended to place one on each side, grip the object and pull it out.

Everything was going marvelously until he tried to insert the second finger. He lacked enough skill at the controls and he couldn’t avoid pressing the object further inside. It was at that moment that a strange sound echoed in the depths of the tunnel, accompanied by a dense cloud of dust that shot down the shaft and out of the hole, throwing the professor backwards. Coughing and with the aid of a flashlight, he peered into the dust cloud and observed how the robot’s camera was still focused on the golden triangle. It had literally been pushed inside the rock.

When he turned the camera to focus on the stone which was blocking the way, it seemed to literally vanish into the ceiling, giving a glimpse of a second block which had already been discovered years before. Much to James’ surprise, just as the first one disappeared, the second began to lift up and reveal a third stone just a few inches away, just as Mary had predicted. This last one was also being lifted up, thus clearing the way.

“What’s happened, James?” asked Richard, impressed by the dense dust cloud that had emerged from the hole. “Did you manage to break down this first wall?”

James nodded, unable to stop coughing due to the dust; even though he hadn’t broken it, he had done something similar. It was unfathomable how the Egyptians had succeeded in designing such a complicated contraption in so little space. Truly astounding.

The robot continued to move all the way up the incline, after which the shaft became completely horizontal. The tunnel widened slightly over those few feet, although it remained impossible for a human to access it. Eventually, he could make out a small exit in the distance.

His heart started to beat faster, as if was going to burst out of his chest. His breathing had been slow before but had now quickened and become erratic. He was excited and desperate to know what was hiding on the other side. The very idea of being the first person to go inside for thousands of years captivated him even more, stirring in him an indescribable feeling of ecstasy. The robot increased its pace, since there wasn’t any incline to delay its journey. It eventually entered the doorway and lit up the whole chamber, the famous Secret Chamber.

It was a rather small and gloomy room just like the others, but it had a much darker and sinister aspect. It shared startling similarities with the King’s Chamber, although on a smaller scale. In one of the walls, there was a small doorway closed off by a large block of stone, which indicated that there was another hidden path in the pyramid which could lead to the chamber. Just opposite the doorway and in the middle of the room was a smooth marble sarcophagus. Along the side were some engravings which had been drawn with more precision than even those in the King’s Chamber. There were hundreds of cylindrical rolls of papyrus, golden statues which were possibly models of different gods or kings, and various other objects which apparently featured in the daily life of a pharaoh: chairs, vessels, beds, thrones, chests, jewelry… All of them had been placed around the sarcophagus as if they were meant to protect it.

After carefully looking through all the king’s belongings, he realized that the thing he was searching for wasn’t there. In fact some marks on the floor left no room for doubt - someone or something had been there previously.

James again seemed to hear a low noise behind him. He was unable to shake the feeling that someone was watching him. After turning around and looking at the exit, all he could see was darkness.

He looked back at the monitor as he slowly pushed out all the air from his lungs. His thumb had become so stiff from the tension that he had pressed one of the joysticks, sending the camera crazy and making it spin in all directions. By the time he had managed to stop it, it had ended up focused on the tiny hole through which it had entered. Something stopped him in his tracks, something he hadn’t noticed going in. The wall had another hole which was at medium height and roughly the same size as that of the entrance; in this case, however, it was only about twenty inches deep. At first glance, he could see that it had been created and smoothed with the same perfection applied to the rest of the pyramid. Inside there was a tiny sarcophagus carved into the rock itself, in such a way that the hole and sarcophagus were one and the same, forming one singular piece. On the side facing the room was en engraving which James recognized as being familiar, but there wasn’t anything inside.

He was utterly convinced that a piece of the
Trifariam
had lain there for thousands of years, and that somebody must have managed to get into the room and steal it. Apparently there were only two ways in; given that the main entrance was closed off by a huge block of stone, someone must have used the shaft which led upwards. But… how had they managed to get rid of the three stones which stood in the way?

He again heard a noise behind him, it seemed like footsteps. They could be heard so clearly that they seemed to be coming from inside the Queen’s Chamber itself, as if somebody was walking towards him. When he turned around, he was just in time to see a huge hand with a ring which struck his face hard, sending him crashing into the wall. The blow was so violent that impact had rendered him practically unconscious on the ground, causing a deep gash which spurted blood. With barely enough energy to get up, he turned to face the person who had hit him as he rubbed the nape of his neck with his hands. His aversion to blood made him feel faint to the point of losing consciousness, but not before he saw a pair of dark-colored shoes a few inches away from him.

“W
ho’s that? Is he crazy?”

“Let’s go before he kills him!”

The trio quickly stumbled out of the car, and amid the confusion they forgot to close the back door. They had been so absorbed in looking at the images broadcast from the Queen’s Chamber that they hadn’t been paying attention to the other cameras. The attacker had accessed the pyramid via the main entrance and deliberately made his way to the King’s Chamber. When he got there, he saw how the group of tourists was sitting on their mats meditating, in some kind of catatonic state completely oblivious to what was going on around them. A quick scan of the room was sufficient for him to realize that the young American who had tricked him was missing. He turned around and walked towards the exit.

That morning after leaving the pyramids, he caught a taxi which took him straight to the hospital where he inquired about his wife. After a wait of over half an hour, during which time the reception staff repeatedly called various departments, they were able to confirm that no pregnant women had been admitted to the maternity ward all morning.

The man was dumbfounded; there must have been a computer error in processing her details, a wrong name or a misunderstanding about which floor she was on. He went over to one of the payphones, inserted a couple of coins and called home. After three rings, he heard the soft voice of a woman on the other end of the phone - it was his wife. He had been tricked.

He crossed the Grand Gallery, intending to go and speak to his boss and tell him about how had been fraudulently robbed of his clients. He would undoubtedly give orders to throw out that lowlife who had had no qualms about making him think that his wife was giving birth in order to make a quick buck from the marvelous tips that the Asians paid.

When he started to go up the tunnel which led to the exit, he heard a deafening noise from one of the lower chambers, probably the Queen’s Chamber. Since everybody else was prohibited from entering that day, it couldn’t have been a group of archaeologists carrying out tests. He crept down there.

To his surprise, in the chamber was the young man who had deceived him. Standing in the anonymity granted to him by the darkness, he could see that he was trying to find something hidden in the depths of one of the shafts in the chamber, and definitely doing so illegally. He was equipped with a monitor and a remote which probably controlled a robot currently inside the hole.

Proud of his homeland and the symbolism that the pyramids held for Egypt, he couldn’t possibly allow him to steal anything. For a moment he thought about calling the guards but, believing himself to be much stronger than James and seeing that he could overpower him without too much trouble, he stalked across the room without a hint of nerves and delivered a blow so violent that it knocked him to the ground, rendering him unconscious.

He picked up one of the explosives from the ground, examined it and, without being completely sure about what it was, he yanked out the cables to use as rope.

Fifteen minutes later, James was still unconscious on the floor with his back to the wall. His hands were intertwined and bound behind his waist. The giant was rifling through everything he had in his backpack without any kind of care. As far as he was concerned, it was just more and more proof of his guilt.

When he eventually opened his eyes, he saw a blurry shadow moving around about six feet away. When he tried to stand up, he discovered that his hands were tied behind his back. The giant approached him just as began to try and wrestle himself free. He was so angry that he delivered an unexpected kick to the pit of his stomach.

“That’s for stealing my customers, you son of a bitch!”

The pain prevented him from uttering a word by way of response.

“What were you doing here with all this equipment?”

“I didn’t steal anything from you - I don’t want your money,” he stammered between groans. “It was the only way I had of getting in.”

“All these tools… Were you going to steal something? Did you discover the famous Secret Chamber?”

James thought about his companions for a moment. Why hadn’t they warned him that this orangutan had burst into the pyramid like a wild beast? “I wasn’t able to discover anything thanks to you. You left me unconscious. How long have I been lying there?”