Oli, A Very New Moon by Carl Derham
*
Stephan had returned to the passageway with the two guards. He located the spot where he had scraped away the dust with his hands and instructed the two men to search for any sign of a door. One of the men said to the other in Arabic, “I think the Englishman has been at the duty-free,” making a drinking motion with his hand. The other man laughed.
“I speak Arabic perfectly,” said Stephan, in perfect Arabic, “and if you want to continue getting paid to smoke and drink coffee every night, then I suggest that you help me.”
They both reluctantly dropped to their knees and began scraping away at the dust. Stephan worked his way down the passage and they moved in the opposite direction. Stephan shone his torch on the floor and noticed a scrape mark to one side of the passage. It travelled for about a metre and then stopped on the join between two blocks.
“This is it,” he said, “this is where he slid down into the hole.” The men came down and shone their torches on the floor.
“People slide down on their asses all the time,” said one man, just as Stephan looked up to see several torchlights sporadically illuminating the tunnel sides by the entrance.
“Stephan!” Jaff shouted, causing the entire pyramid to resonate.
“Down here. I’ve found something.”
It was starting to get a bit crowded in the limited space that the passage afforded. The two men had to squeeze past Stephan so that Jaff could get down to him. Stephan pointed at the mark in the dust and told them not to walk on it. Jaff approached Stephan with a sterner than usual look on his face and held out his hand. Although Stephan was familiar with the bone-crushing effect of Jaff’s handshake he accepted the friendly gesture. Every time Jaff greeted him in this way, Stephan would try and exert a little more pressure on Jaff’s hand, in a vain attempt to match the virility of his salutation, but he could never get anywhere near the vice-like grip that now imprisoned his right hand
“That’s where he slid down,” he winced, “this entire block must have upended and then closed again,”
“You do realise how completely crazy this sounds don’t you Stephan?” bellowed Jaff extending an arm and resting it on Stephan’s shoulder.
“I know what I saw. He disappeared into the floor,” replied Stephan, staring intently into Jaff’s dark, shark-like eyes.
Jaff paused for a few seconds, then said, “I’ve got some ultrasonic gear up top, not that we haven’t been over this whole area a thousand times before.”
With that he instructed two of his men to fetch the machine from the truck. They used ultrasonic to detect hidden chambers behind the stones. Some Egyptologists, convinced that the pyramids were hiding great treasures and secrets, wanted to dismantle the structures from the top down, but they had more chance of convincing Jaff to wear a mankini.