The Sun God

Chapter 1

Chapter 1

15 February 1923

Egypt

Rifle bullets threw up puffs of amber dust around her feet as Quinn sprinted through the hot sand carrying her leather satchel filled with stolen Egyptian artefacts. She leapt and barely cleared a crumbling wall, behind which her friend Jimmy was covering her escape. A bullet sheared through the strap of her satchel, causing an alabaster statuette of a cat to spill out onto the scorching Egyptian sand. Quinn immediately joined Jimmy in returning fire, uselessly emptying her six-shot revolver into the fallen sandstone blocks, behind which three Berber grave robbers had taken cover. While Quinn and Jimmy reloaded, bullets pounded the wall in reply to their offence, throwing up stone chips above their heads.They were in the crumbling ruins of an unnamed ancient temple deep in the Egyptian desert, after having followed camel-mounted Berber thieves in the scorching sun for hours, always taking care to stay out of sight. Their horses had struggled to keep up with the camels, which were far better suited to the heat and sand. What should have been a short dash across the Valley of the Kings to the tomb of Amenhotep II had turned into a hot, slow pursuit, when they had come across three figures exiting the tomb carrying a cache of obviously pilfered items. They were ill-equipped for their desert excursion and their arrival at the ruins had offered the opportunity to creep up on the thieves and grab the treasures from under their noses before both they and their horses succumbed to sunstroke and dehydration.

Now they were pinned down behind the east wall of the ruin, and as the setting sun melted into the horizon, they were blinded by the fiery light that bathed the surrounding hot sand in shades of orange and red.

Quinn and Jimmy sent another barrage of bullets over the wall, half of them burrowing into the sand surrounding the ruins.

As they reloaded yet again, Jimmy jestingly commented, “Come one Quinn! At least try to give them some incentive to duck and take cover.”

Quinn scowled while she pressed a bullet into the barrel of her Smith & Wesson revolver and replied “Why do you always complain that I’m useless with a g*n? Anyway, this is getting us nowhere.”

“Do you have a better idea?” Jimmy asked while casually taking a quick peek over the top of the wall.

Quinn grinned slyly. “As a matter of fact, I do.”

***

She handed Jimmy her g*n. “Take it.”

Jimmy looked at her perplexed “I can’t take that. You’re not that bad a shot.”

“You’ll be firing both guns, while I sneak around the ruins and surprise them,” she explained.

A bullet just cleared the top of the wall, grazing Jimmy’s hair and making him crouch deeper into the sand. He turned his attention back to Quinn. “You’re going to go over there unarmed?!”

Quinn explained further, “The one to our left is behind that fallen column and out of a direct line of sight of his mates. Concentrate your fire on his position. I can jump him while his attention is on you, knocking him out, taking his rifle and turning it on the other two. As soon as they cease firing, you circle to the right.” She pressed her g*n into his hand and crept along the wall past Jimmy.

Jimmy grabbed her left arm, still trying to process the absurdly reckless plan he’d just heard. He looked Quinn straight in the eye as a spray of bullets broke off a chunk of the wall that fell to the sand next to Quinn’s feet. He saw an unwavering determination in those hazel eyes. “Blast! I don’t have a better idea. Do not get yourself killed Q!”

He released her arm and lifted his g*n. She nodded and crept on hands and feet along the fallen sandstone ruins.

Quinn was two years older than Jimmy, but she seemed an insensible reckless youth to fifteen-year-old Jimmy. He had better create one hell of a diversion.

The sun was a mere sliver on the horizon and the light was beginning to fall, as Jimmy emerged over the wall, guns blazing, aiming for his leftmost foe, hoping to kill him before his best friend had to face him unarmed. He missed, but a fierce counterattack followed.

Jimmy reloaded as fast as he could and was already firing his first revolver as he slotted the barrel of the second g*n back in place.

Quinn had picked up a heavy rock as she crept closer to the Western side of the ruins. Her target was on the opposite side of the fallen sandstone column. She used a drift of sand piled at its base to quickly ascend the broken blocks of the column. From the height of the weathered stones, Quinn threw the rock with her full force, powered by rage, youth and adrenaline. The Berber robber noticed her diving down on him only a fraction of a second before the rock hit him in the forehead. She heard a satisfying c***k of bone fracturing. It seems aiming a rock was easier for Quinn than aiming a g*n.

A shout came from his two companions as they realised something was wrong. They had ceased firing and were scrambling to defend themselves.

Quinn rolled off the fallen Berber as the first bullet hit the sand around her. As she rolled she grabbed the Berber’s antiquated Winchester rifle, bringing it to bear on her attackers when she came up out of her roll. “Hold it!” she yelled.

They hesitated; two against one, not bad odds. They saw a beautiful, slender seventeen-year-old girl with an innocent face, but with a hard and calculating look in her eyes and neither of them were willing to face a rifle shot in their general direction.

They hesitated a moment too long and a shout came from their rear as Jimmy jumped onto the wall. “Get those hands up, fellows!” Jimmy was pointing two loaded revolvers at them from atop the ruined wall. The last deep-red sunlight of the day illuminated the dust-covered youth as if he were a g*n-slinging hero of the Old West.

The fight was over.

Quinn smiled at him. “You see Jimmy? I told you this would work.”

***

They had disabled the Berber’s rifles, taking the firing pins with them. While the Berber were dragging their unconscious companion to the camels they had tied up just outside the ruins, Quinn and Jimmy set out into the desert in the direction of Luxor, keeping a careful eye on the retreating Berber.

Their horses were too exhausted to carry them and it was about an eight-hour hike through the desert back to the excavation site in the Valley of the Kings. They were not in a hurry as they would not be missed until the morning, and now that the adrenaline of the shootout at the ruins was dissipating, they fell back to the calm rhythm of night time in the desert.

Quinn was rummaging in her satchel as they walked. By now the sun had set and even though the light of the crescent moon did not provide much clarity, Quinn still recognised some of the artefacts therein. She pulled the small alabaster statue of the cat goddess Bastet.

“There’s mostly rubbish here. This Bastet statue is about the most valuable thing they took. That should fetch us,” she did a quick count in her head, “about three hundred pounds from the private collectors I’ve got lined up, providing we can smuggle it out of Egypt, of course. The rest isn’t worth running the risk of getting caught at the border.”

Jimmy looked up at the star-covered night sky. “You mean we risked our necks for a ten-inch cat figurine which will probably get us caught and thrown in jail when we try to leave Egypt eventually?”

“Do you want to sneak back to the tomb and see what else we can find?” Quinn suggested.

“No thanks, I’m done for tonight,” Jimmy sighed.

“Anyway,” Quinn consoled, “We’re not leaving Egypt anywhere soon. There will be plenty of opportunities to get our hands on some prized artefacts. I’ll figure out a way of discreetly stealing some small items from under Howard Carter’s nose. There are hundreds of items in the chamber we’ve found so far and he hasn’t even entered the burial chamber yet.”

“Everything is catalogued meticulously. Tutankhamen’s tomb is one of the greatest discoveries in archaeology and people are visiting the tomb daily. How do you hope to pull this off with so many eyes watching?” Jimmy asked while he sloshed up a sand dune, now slightly shivering in the cold night air.

“People aren’t looking at the small details at the moment. The whole world is still in awe by the find; an almost entirely intact pharaoh’s tomb! Carter is ecstatic; after all, he’s been poking around the Valley of the Kings fruitlessly for the last seven years, and Lord Carnarvon is simply relieved he hasn’t seen his seven years of investment wasted. Trust me, Jimmy, I’ll find a way,” Quinn said confidently.

***

Shortly after dawn Quinn and Jimmy entered the Valley of the Kings. They turned their horses to the entrance of Tutankhamen’s tomb, which was no more than a series of steps leading down into a hidden burial site.

As they approached and dismounted they saw several Egyptian officials exiting the tomb followed by a stout British gentleman with a well-trimmed heavy moustache, wearing a dark neutral suit, indispensable bow tie and hat. This was the renowned English Egyptologist Howard Carter.

“Miss Westwood! Mr Duncan!” he shouted when he spotted them.

“Exactly where have you two been? Lord Carnarvon isn’t paying his field assistants to go gallivanting around the desert!”

Jimmy closed his eyes, contemplating a certainty of imprisonment in some horrible Egyptian jail.

Quinn, ever confident, turned to the strong commanding figure with the heavy dark moustache and even though she was holding a sack of stolen Egyptian artefacts behind her back for which the punishment under Egyptian law would be harsh, not a shred of uncertainty showed on her face.

“Good morning mister Carter. As you know I am a very enthusiastic archaeologist, and I find myself simply fascinated by the ancient Egyptians, as undoubtedly so are you,” Quinn said as she took a step closer to him.

In a quieter voice, she continued, “We’re in the Valley of the Kings, sir; the resting place of so many great pharaohs, dozens of tombs, their walls brandishing the tale of one of earth’s greatest civilizations, all written in beautifully bewitching hieroglyphs. Who could resist exploring?”

Quinn looked him in the eyes, expectantly awaiting his answer.

Howard Carter was no stranger to the lure of Egypt’s treasures. He nodded once and spoke “Quite understandable, Miss Westwood.” He smiled and enthusiastically continued, “You missed the excitement. We broke through the final seal! Inside, we found a gilt shrine that fills the chamber, life-sized statues of the young pharaoh himself, vibrant yellow walls with depictions of Tutankhamen in different scenes, such wonders!”

He laid his hand on her shoulder and confided, “Quinn, you have been invaluable to us in this endeavour, so please, no more exploring; you still have hundreds of artefacts to catalogue and since this morning you can add Tutankhamen’s sarcophagus with his intact mummy still inside to the list. That will bring out the enthusiastic archaeologist in all of us.”

Quinn smiled innocently, turned back to Jimmy, making sure to discreetly swing her treasure sack round with her and out of sight. Her innocent smile transformed into a wolfish grin as she strolled victoriously back to Jimmy.

“You heard him Jimmy, no more exploring, there’s a lot of work to do.”