The Pharaoh's Secret by Clive Cussler
“When we were all on the same side,” Hassan noted. “Do we have any exposure?”
Shakir shook his head confidently. “Neither the freighter nor Ammon Ta nor the cargo can be traced back to us.”
“What about Hagen, our operative on Lampedusa? Ammon Ta was supposed to deliver the Black Mist to him so he could use it to influence the governments of Europe.”
Shakir read on. “Hagen escaped and made it back to Malta. He will try one more time to purchase the artifacts before they’re revealed to the public. If he’s unsuccessful, he’ll try to steal them. He promises to report back in two days.”
“Hagen is the only link to us now,” Hassan said. “We should eliminate him. Immediately.”
“Not until he has those artifacts. I want those tablets in our possession or destroyed beyond anyone’s ability to reconstruct them.”
“Is it really worth this much effort?” Hassan asked. “We’re not even sure what’s on them.”
Shakir was tired of Hassan’s endless questioning. “Listen to me,” he barked. “We’re about to put the leaders of Europe in a sleeper hold that will give us carte blanche to annex the most valuable part of this continent without any kind of repercussions. If someone finds a clue to the antidote on those tablets—if someone figures out how to counteract the Black Mist—then our entire plan, completely dependent on leverage, will fail. How can you not understand this?”
Hassan shrank back. “Of course, but what makes you think that information will be found on these artifacts?”
“Because that’s what Napoleon was looking for,” Shakir said. “He’d heard rumors of the Mist, sent his men to the City of the Dead and removed everything he could find. It’s only by luck that we were able to piece together the formula from what remained undisturbed and what we recovered from the bay. That means the vast majority of the information was taken. Taken by Europeans from our forefathers. I will not allow them to use it against us. If any of the details happen to exist on these particular relics, they must be retrieved or destroyed. And when it’s done, only then shall we eliminate Hagen.”
“He’s too weak to do it himself,” Hassan suggested.
Shakir considered that. “I agree. Send a group of the new agents to back him up. With orders to make him disappear when it’s over or if he becomes a liability.”
Hassan nodded. “Of course. I’ll choose them personally,” he said. “In the meantime, the others have arrived, they’re waiting to speak with you down in the bunker.”
Shakir sighed. As distasteful as it was, even he had to answer to someone. Osiris was a private military force, the beginnings of an empire that would control governments instead of answer to them. But in many ways, at least until this plan came to fruition, it was also a corporation, with Shakir as its president and CEO.
The others, as Hassan had called them, were the equivalent of stockholders and members of the board, though all of them had bigger goals than mere success in business. Even unfathomable wealth was not enough for such men. They lusted for power and control, they wanted empires of their own, and Shakir was just the man to give it to them.
14
Shakir marched toward the shimmering pipeline and the long cinder-block structure that contained one of his many pumping stations. Two of his men stood guard there. They opened the doors and held them wide, keeping their eyes straight ahead. They knew better than to look Shakir in the face.
Once inside, Shakir walked to the rear of the building. A caged door separated him from a mining elevator. He opened it, stepped inside the car, which was designed to carry large groups of men and heavy equipment, and pressed the down button.
Two full minutes and four hundred feet later, the doors opened and Shakir stepped out into a cavernous subterranean compound illuminated by lights hidden in the floor and the walls. Part of the cave was natural, the rest carved out by Shakir’s mining team and the engineers. It ran two hundred yards in length. Most of it was filled with monstrous pumps the size of small houses and dozens of large pipes that twisted and snaked across the huge cavern before meeting at a central point, plunging into the ground and vanishing.
Shakir removed his sunglasses, impressed, as always, by the work. He moved past the oversize machinery to a control center, where large screens displayed the outline of Egypt and much of North Africa. A series of lines crisscrossed the map, ignoring all borders. Numbers beside each line indicated pressures, flow rates and volumes. Tiny flags blinking green pleased him.
Finally, he arrived at the plush conference room. Aside from the view—there was none—the room was the equivalent of any corporate meeting space in a high-rise office tower. The mahogany table in the center was surrounded by plush chairs filled with corpulent men. Screens on the wall displayed the Osiris logo.
Shakir took a seat at the head of the table and studied the group, who waited for him. Five Egyptians, three from Libya, two Algerians and one representative each from the Sudan and Tunisia. Shakir had taken Osiris from nothing and turned it into a major international corporation in a few short years. The formula for success required four primary ingredients: hard work, ruthless cunning, connection and, of course, money. Other people’s money.
Shakir and his cronies from the Secret Service had provided the first three parts, the men around the table had provided the last. All of them were wealthy, most had once been powerful—had once been because the Arab Spring that had tossed Shakir out had affected them even more acutely.
It all started in Tunisia, where an impoverished street vendor who had been abused by the police for years set himself on fire in protest.
It seemed so impossible at the time that this act would have any lasting effect, that it would be anything more than another life burned up and discarded. But as it turned out the man not only lit himself on fire, he became the match that set the Arab world alight and burned half of it to the ground.
Tunisia fell first and those who’d run the country for decades escaped to Saudi Arabia. Algeria suffered next. And then the fire spread, engulfing Libya, where Muammar Gaddafi had ruled longer and more harshly than anyone: forty-two years with an iron grip. Those close to him had grown rich and powerful on oil wealth. When the civil war came, many did not escape with even their lives, but those who’d been smart enough to send money and family overseas were luckier—though, like their Tunisian compatriots, they soon became refugees, men without a country or a purpose.
Egypt came apart after that and the reverberations took down Yemen, Syria and Bahrain to varying degrees. All from such a tiny spark.
Now that the flames had burned out, the men who’d survived the blaze wanted to reassert their control.
“I trust you all had a pleasant journey,” Shakir said.
“We don’t wish to make small talk,” one of the Egyptians said, a man with white hair, a sharp Western suit and a large Breitling watch on his wrist. He had made his money being paid vast sums by the Egyptian Air Force to use planes they’d sold to him for pennies. “When will the operation begin? All of us are anxious.”
Shakir turned to another subordinate. “Are the pumping stations ready?”
The man nodded affirmatively, tapped the keyboard in front of him and brought up the same schematic of Africa that had been on display in the control room.
“As you can see,” Shakir said, “the network is complete.”
“Any indication that our drilling has been noticed?” one of the former generals from Libya asked.
“No,” Shakir insisted. “By using the construction of the oil pipe to conceal our underground work, we’ve been able to keep anyone from being suspicious while we tap into every important section of the deep sub-Saharan aquifer. Which, as you men know, feeds every spring and desert oasis from here to the western edge of Algeria.”
“What about the shallow aquifers?” one of the other Libyans asked. “Our people have been drawing on them for
years.”
“Our studies show that all freshwater sources are dependent on this deeper body of liquid,” Shakir said. “Once we begin drawing water from it in large amounts, their supplies will become unreliable.”
“I want them to be cut off,” the Tunisian insisted.
“Impossible to completely cut them off,” Shakir replied. “But this is a desert. When Tunisia, Algeria and Libya see an overnight reduction in their water supply, of perhaps eighty to ninety percent, they will be at our mercy. Even rebels need to drink. Water will be restored when you men are back in power. Working together, Osiris will then control all of North Africa.”
“And what happens to the water?” the man from Algiers asked. “You can’t just pump billions of gallons of water out into the desert every day without someone noticing.”
“It runs through the pipelines,” Shakir explained, pointing to the network that crisscrossed the map, “and then into underground channels—here, here and here. From there, it goes into the Nile. Where it flows anonymously to the sea.”
The power brokers looked around at one another approvingly. “Ingenious,” one of them said.
“What about the Europeans and Americans who might protest our sudden return?” the Libyan asked.
Shakir grinned. “Our man in Italy is taking care of that,” he explained. “I have a strange feeling they won’t be a problem.”
“Very well,” the Libyan said. “When does it begin? And is there anything more you need?”
Shakir treasured their enthusiasm. Deposed from their seats of power, these men were so eager to get back they would give him anything to make it happen. But he’d extorted enough in terms of cash and concessions from them. It was time to act.
“Most of the pumps have been running for months,” he told them. “The siphoning effect has begun to take place. The rest can be started immediately.” He motioned to a technician. “Signal the other stations: bring all pumps online.”
As the technician executed Shakir’s order, the sound of the gigantic turbines and pumps whirring to life came through the wall. In moments, it would be too loud for verbal conversation. Shakir decided he would have the last word.
“In the desert we call the hot wind Sirocco. Today we send it forth. It will sweep across Africa, putting an end to this Arab Spring and replacing it with a most parched and blistering summer.”
15
Gafsa, Tunisia
Paul Trout stood in the afternoon heat, sweating through his clothes and feeling his face burn despite the almost sombrero-sized hat he wore. As the sun dropped lower, its rays crept under the brim of the hat, stinging his skin with particular glee, as if to say pale New Englanders do not belong in this particular part of the world.
At six foot eight, Paul was the tallest of a group of hikers proceeding up a rocky hill devoid of any foliage. He was also the least athletic. A few paces ahead his wife, Gamay, continued to stride up the mountain as if it were a happy walk with the dog back home. She wore a runner’s outfit and a tan-colored ball cap. Her red hair was tied back in a ponytail that looped through the back of the cap and swung from side to side as she charged forward.
Paul shrugged. Someone had to be the athlete in the family. And someone had to be the voice of reason. “I think we should take a break,” he said.
“Come on, Paul,” Gamay called back, “it’s not far now. One more hill and you can take a break in the miraculous waters of the world’s newest lake and rest on Gafsa Beach.”
The area near the town of Gafsa had been an oasis since the time of the Roman Empire. Springs, baths and curative pools dotted the land. Most were supposedly imbued with healing powers of one kind or another. In fact, during their breaks from studying ancient ruins and perusing the famous Kasbah, Paul and Gamay had spent time relaxing in a spring-fed pool dug by the Romans and surrounded by towering stone walls.
“There’s plenty of miraculous water back at the hotel,” he joked.
“Yes,” Gamay said. “But those waters have been in place for thousands of years. This lake just appeared out of nowhere six months ago. Doesn’t that intrigue you?”
Paul was a geologist. He’d grown up in Massachusetts, spending plenty of time on the water and snooping around the famous Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. Eventually, he went to Scripps Institution of Oceanography and earned a Ph.D. in marine geology, focusing on deep marine floor structures. His name was listed on several patents connected with technologies to study geologic formations beneath the seafloor. So, yes, based on his background, the thought of a lake appearing from out of nowhere did intrigue him, but his interest went only so far, and after an hour driving on what someone loosely called a road, followed by thirty minutes of hiking in the blazing sun, he was getting close to his limit.
“We’re almost there,” Gamay shouted back.
Paul marveled at his wife. She was a creature of boundless energy, always in motion. Even around the house she never seemed to sit still. Her doctorate was in marine biology, though she’d taken enough classes in other disciplines to have several additional degrees. Having watched her over the years, Paul knew she easily became bored with anything she mastered and was always searching for a new challenge.
She often insisted, with a wink of her eye, that he was endlessly frustrating and that was the key to their long, happy marriage. That and a healthy desire for adventure together, which was supported by their work for NUMA and often carried over into their vacations.
Up ahead, Gamay reached the top of the ridge even before the guide. She stopped, took in the view and put her hands on her slender hips.
The guide stopped beside her seconds later, but instead of looking impressed, there was a hint of confusion on his face. He removed his hat and scratched his head in puzzlement.
As Paul came over the ridge, he saw why. What had been a deep lake surrounded by rocky hills was now a mudflat with a ten-foot circle of brackish water in the middle. A discolored line marred the surrounding bluff, marking the water’s high point the way a ring of soap scum forms around a bathtub.
Some of the other tourists arrived at the top shortly after Paul. Like him, they were speechless. Having seen a selection of stunning photographs before being sold on the tour and shuttled out to the desert, this was not what they’d expected.
“Now, that’s a pitiful sight,” one woman said with a Southern accent. “Wouldn’t even qualify as a fishing hole where I come from.”
The guide, a local man who’d made a business out of taking tourists to the lake, seemed confused. “I don’t understand. How is this possible? The lake was up to here two days ago.”
He pointed to the discolored ring lining the rocks.
“Evaporation,” a man from Scotland said. “It’s bloody hot out here.”
Staring at the mud, Paul forgot all his aches and pains. He knew they were looking at a mystery. The appearance of a lake was one thing—hot and cool springs worked their way to the surface all the time—but for a lake to disappear almost overnight . . . that was something altogether different.
He scanned the surroundings to get an idea of the surface area and depth, making a rough estimate of the lake’s volume. “That much water couldn’t evaporate in two months,” he said. “Let alone two days.”
“Then where did it go?” the woman from the South asked.
“Maybe someone nicked it,” the Scotsman replied. “After all, this whole area is in the middle of a drought.”
The man was right about that. Tunisia was suffering badly, even by North African standards. But a thousand tanker trucks filled to capacity wouldn’t have drained a lake this size. Paul looked for a break in the landscape or some avenue of escape for the water to flow through. He saw nothing of the kind.
Flies began to buzz around them and the group went silent. Finally, the Southern woman had seen enough. She patted the tour guide on the shoulde
r and turned back down the hill. “Afraid someone pulled the plug on you, honey. Sorry about that.”
In rapid succession the others followed, not interested in studying a mud hole. Even the guide left, talking the whole way down, desperately trying to explain what the lake had looked like just days before and insisting quite calmly that even though it was gone, there would be absolutely no refunds.
Paul lingered, considering what they saw and watching as a group of children began picking their way through the dried mud to get at the last remnants of water.
“She’s right,” he said to Gamay as she eased up beside him.
“About what?”
“About someone pulling the plug,” he said. “Springs like this bubble up from aquifers quite often. Usually when the layers of rock underneath crack and shift. Sometimes the water gets trapped, forms a lake like it apparently did here. Sometimes the spring keeps feeding it, sometimes it’s a one-shot deal. But even if the layers of rock shift again and cut off the water, the lake usually remains in place for months until the sun slowly bakes it dry. For this lake to vanish so suddenly, the water had to go somewhere else. But there’s no stream flowing away from here. The landscape is one big rocky bowl.”
“So if it can’t go up and it can’t go out, it must have gone down,” she said. “Is that your theory, Mr. Trout?”
He nodded. “Right back where it came from.”
“Have you ever heard of that happening before?”
“No,” Paul said. “As a matter of fact, I haven’t.”
As they marveled at the sight and took a few pictures, a man who’d been doing the same thing on a different section of the rim made his way over to them. He was rather short, perhaps five foot six, a floppy canvas hat covered his head and a layer of salt-and-pepper stubble covered his tanned face. A backpack, walking stick and binoculars suggested he was a hiker. But Paul noticed a yellow-and-black surveyor’s level in his hand.
Shakir shook his head confidently. “Neither the freighter nor Ammon Ta nor the cargo can be traced back to us.”
“What about Hagen, our operative on Lampedusa? Ammon Ta was supposed to deliver the Black Mist to him so he could use it to influence the governments of Europe.”
Shakir read on. “Hagen escaped and made it back to Malta. He will try one more time to purchase the artifacts before they’re revealed to the public. If he’s unsuccessful, he’ll try to steal them. He promises to report back in two days.”
“Hagen is the only link to us now,” Hassan said. “We should eliminate him. Immediately.”
“Not until he has those artifacts. I want those tablets in our possession or destroyed beyond anyone’s ability to reconstruct them.”
“Is it really worth this much effort?” Hassan asked. “We’re not even sure what’s on them.”
Shakir was tired of Hassan’s endless questioning. “Listen to me,” he barked. “We’re about to put the leaders of Europe in a sleeper hold that will give us carte blanche to annex the most valuable part of this continent without any kind of repercussions. If someone finds a clue to the antidote on those tablets—if someone figures out how to counteract the Black Mist—then our entire plan, completely dependent on leverage, will fail. How can you not understand this?”
Hassan shrank back. “Of course, but what makes you think that information will be found on these artifacts?”
“Because that’s what Napoleon was looking for,” Shakir said. “He’d heard rumors of the Mist, sent his men to the City of the Dead and removed everything he could find. It’s only by luck that we were able to piece together the formula from what remained undisturbed and what we recovered from the bay. That means the vast majority of the information was taken. Taken by Europeans from our forefathers. I will not allow them to use it against us. If any of the details happen to exist on these particular relics, they must be retrieved or destroyed. And when it’s done, only then shall we eliminate Hagen.”
“He’s too weak to do it himself,” Hassan suggested.
Shakir considered that. “I agree. Send a group of the new agents to back him up. With orders to make him disappear when it’s over or if he becomes a liability.”
Hassan nodded. “Of course. I’ll choose them personally,” he said. “In the meantime, the others have arrived, they’re waiting to speak with you down in the bunker.”
Shakir sighed. As distasteful as it was, even he had to answer to someone. Osiris was a private military force, the beginnings of an empire that would control governments instead of answer to them. But in many ways, at least until this plan came to fruition, it was also a corporation, with Shakir as its president and CEO.
The others, as Hassan had called them, were the equivalent of stockholders and members of the board, though all of them had bigger goals than mere success in business. Even unfathomable wealth was not enough for such men. They lusted for power and control, they wanted empires of their own, and Shakir was just the man to give it to them.
14
Shakir marched toward the shimmering pipeline and the long cinder-block structure that contained one of his many pumping stations. Two of his men stood guard there. They opened the doors and held them wide, keeping their eyes straight ahead. They knew better than to look Shakir in the face.
Once inside, Shakir walked to the rear of the building. A caged door separated him from a mining elevator. He opened it, stepped inside the car, which was designed to carry large groups of men and heavy equipment, and pressed the down button.
Two full minutes and four hundred feet later, the doors opened and Shakir stepped out into a cavernous subterranean compound illuminated by lights hidden in the floor and the walls. Part of the cave was natural, the rest carved out by Shakir’s mining team and the engineers. It ran two hundred yards in length. Most of it was filled with monstrous pumps the size of small houses and dozens of large pipes that twisted and snaked across the huge cavern before meeting at a central point, plunging into the ground and vanishing.
Shakir removed his sunglasses, impressed, as always, by the work. He moved past the oversize machinery to a control center, where large screens displayed the outline of Egypt and much of North Africa. A series of lines crisscrossed the map, ignoring all borders. Numbers beside each line indicated pressures, flow rates and volumes. Tiny flags blinking green pleased him.
Finally, he arrived at the plush conference room. Aside from the view—there was none—the room was the equivalent of any corporate meeting space in a high-rise office tower. The mahogany table in the center was surrounded by plush chairs filled with corpulent men. Screens on the wall displayed the Osiris logo.
Shakir took a seat at the head of the table and studied the group, who waited for him. Five Egyptians, three from Libya, two Algerians and one representative each from the Sudan and Tunisia. Shakir had taken Osiris from nothing and turned it into a major international corporation in a few short years. The formula for success required four primary ingredients: hard work, ruthless cunning, connection and, of course, money. Other people’s money.
Shakir and his cronies from the Secret Service had provided the first three parts, the men around the table had provided the last. All of them were wealthy, most had once been powerful—had once been because the Arab Spring that had tossed Shakir out had affected them even more acutely.
It all started in Tunisia, where an impoverished street vendor who had been abused by the police for years set himself on fire in protest.
It seemed so impossible at the time that this act would have any lasting effect, that it would be anything more than another life burned up and discarded. But as it turned out the man not only lit himself on fire, he became the match that set the Arab world alight and burned half of it to the ground.
Tunisia fell first and those who’d run the country for decades escaped to Saudi Arabia. Algeria suffered next. And then the fire spread, engulfing Libya, where Muammar Gaddafi had ruled longer and more harshly than anyone: forty-two years with an iron grip. Those close to him had grown rich and powerful on oil wealth. When the civil war came, many did not escape with even their lives, but those who’d been smart enough to send money and family overseas were luckier—though, like their Tunisian compatriots, they soon became refugees, men without a country or a purpose.
Egypt came apart after that and the reverberations took down Yemen, Syria and Bahrain to varying degrees. All from such a tiny spark.
Now that the flames had burned out, the men who’d survived the blaze wanted to reassert their control.
“I trust you all had a pleasant journey,” Shakir said.
“We don’t wish to make small talk,” one of the Egyptians said, a man with white hair, a sharp Western suit and a large Breitling watch on his wrist. He had made his money being paid vast sums by the Egyptian Air Force to use planes they’d sold to him for pennies. “When will the operation begin? All of us are anxious.”
Shakir turned to another subordinate. “Are the pumping stations ready?”
The man nodded affirmatively, tapped the keyboard in front of him and brought up the same schematic of Africa that had been on display in the control room.
“As you can see,” Shakir said, “the network is complete.”
“Any indication that our drilling has been noticed?” one of the former generals from Libya asked.
“No,” Shakir insisted. “By using the construction of the oil pipe to conceal our underground work, we’ve been able to keep anyone from being suspicious while we tap into every important section of the deep sub-Saharan aquifer. Which, as you men know, feeds every spring and desert oasis from here to the western edge of Algeria.”
“What about the shallow aquifers?” one of the other Libyans asked. “Our people have been drawing on them for
“Our studies show that all freshwater sources are dependent on this deeper body of liquid,” Shakir said. “Once we begin drawing water from it in large amounts, their supplies will become unreliable.”
“I want them to be cut off,” the Tunisian insisted.
“Impossible to completely cut them off,” Shakir replied. “But this is a desert. When Tunisia, Algeria and Libya see an overnight reduction in their water supply, of perhaps eighty to ninety percent, they will be at our mercy. Even rebels need to drink. Water will be restored when you men are back in power. Working together, Osiris will then control all of North Africa.”
“And what happens to the water?” the man from Algiers asked. “You can’t just pump billions of gallons of water out into the desert every day without someone noticing.”
“It runs through the pipelines,” Shakir explained, pointing to the network that crisscrossed the map, “and then into underground channels—here, here and here. From there, it goes into the Nile. Where it flows anonymously to the sea.”
The power brokers looked around at one another approvingly. “Ingenious,” one of them said.
“What about the Europeans and Americans who might protest our sudden return?” the Libyan asked.
Shakir grinned. “Our man in Italy is taking care of that,” he explained. “I have a strange feeling they won’t be a problem.”
“Very well,” the Libyan said. “When does it begin? And is there anything more you need?”
Shakir treasured their enthusiasm. Deposed from their seats of power, these men were so eager to get back they would give him anything to make it happen. But he’d extorted enough in terms of cash and concessions from them. It was time to act.
“Most of the pumps have been running for months,” he told them. “The siphoning effect has begun to take place. The rest can be started immediately.” He motioned to a technician. “Signal the other stations: bring all pumps online.”
As the technician executed Shakir’s order, the sound of the gigantic turbines and pumps whirring to life came through the wall. In moments, it would be too loud for verbal conversation. Shakir decided he would have the last word.
“In the desert we call the hot wind Sirocco. Today we send it forth. It will sweep across Africa, putting an end to this Arab Spring and replacing it with a most parched and blistering summer.”
15
Gafsa, Tunisia
Paul Trout stood in the afternoon heat, sweating through his clothes and feeling his face burn despite the almost sombrero-sized hat he wore. As the sun dropped lower, its rays crept under the brim of the hat, stinging his skin with particular glee, as if to say pale New Englanders do not belong in this particular part of the world.
At six foot eight, Paul was the tallest of a group of hikers proceeding up a rocky hill devoid of any foliage. He was also the least athletic. A few paces ahead his wife, Gamay, continued to stride up the mountain as if it were a happy walk with the dog back home. She wore a runner’s outfit and a tan-colored ball cap. Her red hair was tied back in a ponytail that looped through the back of the cap and swung from side to side as she charged forward.
Paul shrugged. Someone had to be the athlete in the family. And someone had to be the voice of reason. “I think we should take a break,” he said.
“Come on, Paul,” Gamay called back, “it’s not far now. One more hill and you can take a break in the miraculous waters of the world’s newest lake and rest on Gafsa Beach.”
The area near the town of Gafsa had been an oasis since the time of the Roman Empire. Springs, baths and curative pools dotted the land. Most were supposedly imbued with healing powers of one kind or another. In fact, during their breaks from studying ancient ruins and perusing the famous Kasbah, Paul and Gamay had spent time relaxing in a spring-fed pool dug by the Romans and surrounded by towering stone walls.
“There’s plenty of miraculous water back at the hotel,” he joked.
“Yes,” Gamay said. “But those waters have been in place for thousands of years. This lake just appeared out of nowhere six months ago. Doesn’t that intrigue you?”
Paul was a geologist. He’d grown up in Massachusetts, spending plenty of time on the water and snooping around the famous Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. Eventually, he went to Scripps Institution of Oceanography and earned a Ph.D. in marine geology, focusing on deep marine floor structures. His name was listed on several patents connected with technologies to study geologic formations beneath the seafloor. So, yes, based on his background, the thought of a lake appearing from out of nowhere did intrigue him, but his interest went only so far, and after an hour driving on what someone loosely called a road, followed by thirty minutes of hiking in the blazing sun, he was getting close to his limit.
“We’re almost there,” Gamay shouted back.
Paul marveled at his wife. She was a creature of boundless energy, always in motion. Even around the house she never seemed to sit still. Her doctorate was in marine biology, though she’d taken enough classes in other disciplines to have several additional degrees. Having watched her over the years, Paul knew she easily became bored with anything she mastered and was always searching for a new challenge.
She often insisted, with a wink of her eye, that he was endlessly frustrating and that was the key to their long, happy marriage. That and a healthy desire for adventure together, which was supported by their work for NUMA and often carried over into their vacations.
Up ahead, Gamay reached the top of the ridge even before the guide. She stopped, took in the view and put her hands on her slender hips.
The guide stopped beside her seconds later, but instead of looking impressed, there was a hint of confusion on his face. He removed his hat and scratched his head in puzzlement.
As Paul came over the ridge, he saw why. What had been a deep lake surrounded by rocky hills was now a mudflat with a ten-foot circle of brackish water in the middle. A discolored line marred the surrounding bluff, marking the water’s high point the way a ring of soap scum forms around a bathtub.
Some of the other tourists arrived at the top shortly after Paul. Like him, they were speechless. Having seen a selection of stunning photographs before being sold on the tour and shuttled out to the desert, this was not what they’d expected.
“Now, that’s a pitiful sight,” one woman said with a Southern accent. “Wouldn’t even qualify as a fishing hole where I come from.”
The guide, a local man who’d made a business out of taking tourists to the lake, seemed confused. “I don’t understand. How is this possible? The lake was up to here two days ago.”
He pointed to the discolored ring lining the rocks.
“Evaporation,” a man from Scotland said. “It’s bloody hot out here.”
Staring at the mud, Paul forgot all his aches and pains. He knew they were looking at a mystery. The appearance of a lake was one thing—hot and cool springs worked their way to the surface all the time—but for a lake to disappear almost overnight . . . that was something altogether different.
He scanned the surroundings to get an idea of the surface area and depth, making a rough estimate of the lake’s volume. “That much water couldn’t evaporate in two months,” he said. “Let alone two days.”
“Then where did it go?” the woman from the South asked.
“Maybe someone nicked it,” the Scotsman replied. “After all, this whole area is in the middle of a drought.”
The man was right about that. Tunisia was suffering badly, even by North African standards. But a thousand tanker trucks filled to capacity wouldn’t have drained a lake this size. Paul looked for a break in the landscape or some avenue of escape for the water to flow through. He saw nothing of the kind.
Flies began to buzz around them and the group went silent. Finally, the Southern woman had seen enough. She patted the tour guide on the shoulde
In rapid succession the others followed, not interested in studying a mud hole. Even the guide left, talking the whole way down, desperately trying to explain what the lake had looked like just days before and insisting quite calmly that even though it was gone, there would be absolutely no refunds.
Paul lingered, considering what they saw and watching as a group of children began picking their way through the dried mud to get at the last remnants of water.
“She’s right,” he said to Gamay as she eased up beside him.
“About what?”
“About someone pulling the plug,” he said. “Springs like this bubble up from aquifers quite often. Usually when the layers of rock underneath crack and shift. Sometimes the water gets trapped, forms a lake like it apparently did here. Sometimes the spring keeps feeding it, sometimes it’s a one-shot deal. But even if the layers of rock shift again and cut off the water, the lake usually remains in place for months until the sun slowly bakes it dry. For this lake to vanish so suddenly, the water had to go somewhere else. But there’s no stream flowing away from here. The landscape is one big rocky bowl.”
“So if it can’t go up and it can’t go out, it must have gone down,” she said. “Is that your theory, Mr. Trout?”
He nodded. “Right back where it came from.”
“Have you ever heard of that happening before?”
“No,” Paul said. “As a matter of fact, I haven’t.”
As they marveled at the sight and took a few pictures, a man who’d been doing the same thing on a different section of the rim made his way over to them. He was rather short, perhaps five foot six, a floppy canvas hat covered his head and a layer of salt-and-pepper stubble covered his tanned face. A backpack, walking stick and binoculars suggested he was a hiker. But Paul noticed a yellow-and-black surveyor’s level in his hand.