“I would have liked to,” Amina said sadly, gliding her fingers down the cover. “But we would never have been able to afford it. So, I make do. I make salves, ointments, and teas with any herbs I find. I read all I can on diseases and treatments. And I keep dreaming.”
Leila spun her pencil between her fingers, unsure how to respond. Translating hieroglyphics seemed so insignificant in comparison to the help Amina really needed. What the woman could use was money. This treasure lost in the wilderness. Maybe this was the breakthrough she’d been waiting for, even if her brother thought otherwise.
Amina was already immersed in her book, so Leila wriggled deeper into her pillows and opened the notepad to an empty page. She whispered to herself, mentally rearranging the symbols into a different word order until they made sense, then wrote her interpretation on the notepad. After half an hour, a loose, yet decent translation began to take shape.
One cartouche, a thin oval line surrounding a cluster of hieroglyphs, was immediately obvious—Ptolemy. The final dynasty of pharaohs. Leila’s heart thudded as she moved on to the next column, hoping for further explanation. She stopped and frowned.
Not for the first time, she wished she had her books with her. She tapped her pen to her chin. A hawk, an arm, a fire drill, a vulture, two feathers, a quail chick, and a priest. There was something familiar about the grouping.
Mouthing the sounds depicted by the hieroglyphics, she scribbled them in her notebook. Mdj. Tilting her head, she narrowed her eyes at the fire drill, a symbol of protection. Then she noticed a bent line between the priest and the quail chick. The bent line was a throwing stick, which indicated non-Egyptians.
Foreign Mdj. Protectors.
A chill prickled at her skin and she gaped at the document. Now it made sense.
Medjay.
Her brain wanted to burst from all the questions that scurried into her head like a swarm of scarabs. The Medjay? How could that be? If this doorway was something from the Ptolemaic kingdom, what on earth were the Medjay doing on there? Maybe the hieroglyphics were misplaced. Maybe they’d been copied from a different ruin.
Leila looked up at Amina.
“What’s in your grandmother’s writings? Was this the only ancient site mentioned?”
Amina glanced up from her book. “I think so. She wrote of…” She paused to pick up the pages and glance them over. “Hmm. Only this door she drew. That’s all she mentions.”
“That’s odd.” Leila looked over the translation again. Maybe she’d made a mistake.
“What’s wrong?”
“I’m just trying to piece this together. Have you ever heard of the Medjay?”
Amina shook her head.
“They were originally from Medja, which was an ancient land south of Egypt. They were first recruited as desert scouts in the Old Kingdom, around 2300 B.C., then, over the course of a thousand years or more, they evolved into a sort of special paramilitary force.”
“An ancient army?” Amina lowered her book and one eyebrow popped up.
Leila nodded. “Usually they protected the royal palaces and tombs in ancient Thebes—modern day Luxor. Then, for whatever reason, after the Twentieth Dynasty, they vanished.”
“What do they have to do with the journal?”
Leila shrugged, regarding the nagging uncertainty in her gut. “I don’t know. This describes a doorway, which I think could be from the Ptolemaic period. But I don’t know why the Medjay are also on there. They disappeared from all written records hundreds of years before the Ptolemies came to power. If I translated this correctly, then this could be the most recent mention of them in three thousand years. Besides textbooks.”
Amina’s mouth dropped open. “That’s amazing.”
Leila held up the sketch, studying the markings. If only she could see the ruins for herself. “Did your grandmother say where she found this?”
“Well, not exactly.” Amina reached across the cushions and picked up the pages of Arabic writing. “She mentions traveling through the Sinai mountains with her grandfather, Malik, and that they stopped on a mountain top, which is where she saw this door. She also wrote a passage. Not in Arabic. Something that looks… Greek?”
“Greek?” Leila gasped. “That would fit with Ptolemy.”
Amina handed the paper over. Leila took it, a bit too eagerly, and locked her eyes on the Grecian script halfway down the page. If only she’d done more than just the one year of Greek she took in her undergraduate program.
Some words were easy. Aigyptos. That would be Egypt. And notos. That meant south. Vouna. Mountains. And schoinos. A unit of length used in ancient Egypt, somewhere between four and seven miles—depending on who was measuring.
“Amina,” Leila started slowly, the realization sinking in. A grin spread over her face. “This is a guide. A map. We can find the tomb.”
CHAPTER 15
Xander lifted his head from his desk. With a groan, he peeled off the sheet of paper stuck to his cheek. How long had he slept? The room had grown dark as the blackness of night seeped in. Stifling a yawn, he stood and stretched. Now was not the time for sleep.
He flipped on the lights and dropped into his seat at the desk again. Where had he left off? Papers littered the surface in front of him. No order, just chaos. Then he remembered. He was stuck. He didn’t know what else he could do. But admitting defeat was not an option.
Without turning in his seat, he looked out the window of his hotel room and the lights of Saqqara flickered back at him. A weight sat on his chest and shoulders, slowly suffocating him. She was out there somewhere. Alive. She had to be. He would keep telling himself that until proved otherwise. He prayed she wasn’t suffering, that whoever did this was showing her some humanity.
There had to be a way to find her. But he’d tried everything. Investigated every angle. He’d talked to everyone in her family. Everyone in the Al-Rashid family. Retraced her steps a hundred times. But nothing. His heart thudded, heating the anger building up inside. What was he going to do aside from knocking on people’s doors asking if Leila was there? He clenched his jaw and curled his hands into fists. Never had he felt so useless. He banged a fist on the desk. Then he heard a soft clunk. The ring box had fallen from the shelf and landed on top of a disorderly stack of papers.
He took in a shuddering breath as he stared at the gray cube. That ring should have been on her finger by now. Maybe they’d have even set a date already.
Now was not the time to give up. There was still someone who could actually help. The thought reverberated in his mind and he glanced at his phone. Only a phone call away. He’d have to sell his soul to that devil, but maybe, just maybe, he could get things done.
No. He wouldn’t resort to that. He tore his gaze away from his phone and rubbed his temples to recollect his thoughts. Instead, he could pick out a new set of potential suspects. Start from square one. Retrace her steps in Saqqara and Cairo again. He had to be missing a clue somewhere.
A clue.
He scanned the documents on the desk. Swearing, he gathered everything up and stacked it on one side until he found what he needed. The newspaper clipping. It had seemed so insignificant, he’d forgotten about it. With his gaze glued on Leila’s picture, he leaned back in the desk chair, then read through the article. Once he reached the last sentence, it cut off. He flipped it over and found the number written in pencil near the top.
Heart pounding, he dialed the number. He wasn’t sure what he expected, but the tightening of his stomach told him he needed to call.
