Jake Atlas and the Tomb of the Emerald Snake Read online

  It was odd to see Pan so emotional, especially about Mum and Dad. But I doubted the police would be much help, not if this cult was as secretive as Kit claimed. If we wanted to help our parents, the plan was obvious.

  “The cult wants the tomb, right?” I asked. “The Tomb of Osiris.”

  “It’s my guess,” Kit said, “and it’s a very educated guess, that the Cult of Osiris wants the mummy from the tomb’s coffin. That is the sacred item – the body of whoever was buried in the place – most likely a priest representing the god Osiris. They want to protect it from … well, from me.”

  “So we’ll get it first,” I said. “We find the tomb, get the mummy and swap it for our parents.”

  “We?”

  “That’s right,” Pan said. “We’re coming with you.”

  Kit stared at Pan for a long moment, and then broke into another roar of laughter. He looked at her again and the smile fell from his face.

  “Oh,” he said. “You’re serious. Not a chance. I am a professional historian and an expert treasure hunter. I know what I’m doing. You both stay here. Sam will buy you a comic or something.”

  Pan shoved him in the chest. “You’re not a historian. You’re a thief. You’re interested in treasure, not our parents.”

  She pushed him again, and this time Kit lost his balance. He tumbled back through the hologram and landed on his backside. If he looked a bit stupid, his recovery saved face – a backwards spring that flipped him up and into a completely over-the-top ninja fighting stance.

  “Bring it on, Goth girl!” he screamed.

  I rushed between them to prevent the fight. I didn’t trust this man either, but we needed his help. Finding that mummy before the cult did was our parents’ only hope.

  “Wait,” I said. “Think about it. We can help you. We’re children, right? What better cover story than our being a family? No one would suspect us. And anyway, you don’t have a choice.”

  “Choice?”

  I held his look and tried not to give away that what I was about to say was a pack of lies. “You really think we didn’t know about you? Remember that bag you sent our mum and dad? We gave it to someone we trust. If we don’t report to him by six o’clock, that person has instructions to pass this address on to the police, along with information about your plan to find the Tomb of Osiris. So it’s up to you, Kit. You can either take us with you or lock us up here and wait for the entire Cairo police department to break us out.”

  Kit rubbed his stubble, watching me like he was trying to decide whether or not to punch me. I guess he decided not to, because a broad grin broke out across his stony features.

  “That was good, kid,” he said. “Of course it’s a load of nonsense. The bag is in your back pocket. But you sold it really well.”

  He turned. “What do you say, Sam? A fake family. Could work.”

  Sami’s face screwed up even tighter in horror. “It’s a terrible idea!” he said. “Kit, they’re children. We agreed we’d look after them.”

  “Always plan for the unplanned,” Kit replied. “The first rule of treasure-hunting.”

  “That’s not the first rule. The first rule is never work with children.”

  “Rules are made to be broken, Sam.”

  “Kit, they are twelve years old.”

  “Twelve and a half,” I corrected.

  “Everyone just slow down,” Sami insisted. “Jake, Pandora, perhaps you can come with me in the van, in a support role. It’s safe enough there and I can keep an eye on—”

  “We’re going with Kit,” Pan insisted.

  Kit clapped his hands again. “The old team!”

  “What?” Pan asked.

  “Oh. Nothing.”

  He was a strange guy, Dr Kit Thorn. I didn’t trust a word he said, but we seemed to be after the same thing: the Tomb of Osiris. Still, something nagged me about the plan.

  “Wait,” I said. “How do we know we can get the mummy?”

  “Oh, that bit’s easy,” Kit said. “Just sling it over your shoulder. They’re scrawny little things. Hey, Sam, remember that time in Peru when I had to carry five of them? Two over each shoulder, and one—”

  “No,” I interrupted. “I mean, how do we even know there is a mummy? How do we know the tomb of Osiris actually exists?”

  Kit’s grin grew even wider, as if he’d been waiting for that question. He looked to Sami, who shook his head furiously. Kit nodded as if Sami had just completely agreed to everything.

  “You two had better come with me,” he said.

  12

  Twenty minutes later we were at the Egyptian Museum in central Cairo. Kit had led us through hordes of tourists, guides, touts and trinket sellers, passing glass cases that showed off statues of kings, ancient mummies and the golden loot of King Tutankhamun. Pan wanted to pause and look at the displays, but we had to follow Kit up the stone staircase to a dusty, dimly lit room on the museum’s upper floor.

  No guides bothered bringing their tours up here, where glass cases displayed unimpressive scraps of ancient documents. Kit was interested in one of the smallest fragments. It looked like a charred sheet of newspaper, blackened and frayed around the edges, and covered in squiggly ink writing.

  “This is a papyrus,” Kit said, “an ancient Egyptian form of paper, made from—”

  “We know what papyrus is,” Pan interrupted. “What’s this got to do with the tomb of Osiris and finding our parents?”

  Kit glared at her, but cleared his throat and continued. “This papyrus, known as the ‘Tomb Robber’s Tale’, is our only clue to finding the tomb. It was written by a professional thief named Ipuwer around three thousand years ago. On this side of the document, Ipuwer talks of breaking into tombs in the Valley of the Kings. He notes secret entrances and tunnels in ways that exactly match the archaeology.”

  “You mean he was telling the truth?” I said.

  “It seems so. And down here he mentions the Tomb of Osiris.”

  I crouched to examine the inky squiggles in the grey glow that filtered through the room’s dust-covered skylight. “Does he say where it is?”

  “Unfortunately not,” Kit replied. “We suspect he wrote the location on the other side of the document.”

  “Can we see it?”

  “No. The papyrus is ancient. To turn it over would be to destroy it. You’d have seconds to photograph it before the whole thing disintegrated.”

  “That’s all we need, right? Seconds.”

  “That’s all we need, yes. The museum thinks differently. There’s no chance they’ll let anyone turn this document over.”

  “We could ask, at least. You’re a historian, right?”

  “I am a brilliant historian, but they don’t like me here. I’ve liberated certain items from this place.”

  “Liberated? You mean stolen?”

  “Yes, once or twice.”

  “Once or twice? You don’t remember?”

  “Two or three times, maybe four. Anyway, there’s no way anyone is going to read the other side of this papyrus as long as it’s in this museum.”

  “But … what if it’s not in this museum any more?” Pan asked.

  “Now you’re talking.”

  “Wait,” I said. “We’re going to steal it? But … I can’t.”

  They looked at me, shocked. Usually something as crazy as robbing a museum would be exactly my sort of thing. But I remembered the promise I’d made back at the hotel. No more stealing.

  Pan grabbed my arm and pulled me close.

  “We have to, Jake. Without that papyrus we can’t find the tomb. Without the tomb we can’t find the coffin. Without the coffin, Mum and Dad are dead.”

  I’d never heard Pan talk with so much concern – or any concern – for our parents. But she was right; this wasn’t a family squabble. This was about saving their lives.

  “All right,” I agreed. “When are we doing this?”

  “In ninety seconds,” Kit replied.

  He
picked up a rucksack he’d brought from his headquarters in the souk. “This is going to be fun!”

  His bag was a tacky souvenir from Egyptomania, decorated with an image of a ruined temple. Before we’d left the shop, we had all dressed in similarly dumb stuff: T-shirts with pictures of Cleopatra and baseball caps shaped like pyramids. We were disguised as a family of idiots.

  “One minute,” Kit said. “Come on.”

  We followed him into the corridor, where a balustrade looked down to an atrium lined with glass display cases and giant statues of pharaohs. Groups of tourists swarmed around guides with coloured paddles. Others crammed into the museum shop, snapping up catalogues and postcards, plastic pyramids and plaster obelisks.

  “See those shoppers?” Kit asked. “See what they’re buying?”

  “Looks like the junk from your shop,” Pan replied.

  “It is junk from our shop. We’ve supplied the museum store for the past few weeks. It wasn’t hard to win the contract. We offered everything at less than half the previous supplier’s price. That was my idea.”

  “But … why?” Pan asked.

  I don’t know how, but the plan was suddenly obvious to me. I was thinking like Kit. “There’s something in the souvenirs,” I said. “They’re rigged to cause a distraction.”

  From his bag, Kit brought out three small gadgets. They looked like silver pens, but with mouthpieces in the middle. He handed us one each.

  “These are breathing tubes,” he said. “Each contains enough compressed oxygen to last ten minutes.”

  “Breathing tubes?”

  “In ten seconds there will be total panic. Do what I say and we’ll be out of here with what we need to find the tomb and save your parents. Mess around and there’s a good chance you’ll be shot.”

  He clapped his hands. “This is exciting, right?”

  But he didn’t look excited. He looked confused. He paused, then leaned close and lowered his voice.

  “I bet my life looks glamorous to you, but it actually can get lonely, you know? Sometimes it’s just me and a dead mummy. I want to share this experience with someone. There’s Sam, but I’m not even sure he likes me. Do you think he likes me? I’m likeable, aren’t I?”

  “I don’t like you at all,” Pan said.

  Kit pulled off her baseball cap and ruffled her hair. “You’re funny, Pandora! We make a good team.”

  Suddenly there was a scream.

  It rang out across the atrium, so loud that everyone turned. An overweight tourist waddling out of the museum shop dropped his bag. Black smoke was rising from it.

  “Fire!” someone cried. Another tourist dropped her shopping bag as smoke gushed from the top. The dark cloud engulfed her in seconds and kept spreading.

  “What’s going on?” Pan demanded. “What’s in those bags?”

  “Just souvenirs,” Kit replied, “nothing more. Souvenirs rigged with smoke canisters and a panic-inducing hallucinogenic.”

  Around the museum, more people screamed for help as black smoke pumped from their shopping bags. The clouds mixed with one another, filling the atrium, rising higher. Suddenly everyone was screaming and flapping. A woman barged into a guard and punched him in the face. A man yelled “Citizen’s arrest!” as he wrestled a statue of a pharaoh. Alarms wailed. People fell into display cases. It was chaos!

  “Now would be a good time to use your breathing tubes,” Kit said. “Green light on the end means it’s full. Red light for empty.”

  He twisted the mouthpiece on his tube and slotted it into his mouth. I tried to copy him but mine didn’t work and I breathed in a wisp of the smoke. My mind flooded with a sudden sense that I was under attack.

  Kit grabbed my tube and of course it worked, making me look like a right idiot.

  “I said, do what I say,” he growled.

  Along the upper hall gates began to slide shut, sealing off the rooms. Kit hurled his rucksack so it stopped just inside the entrance to the papyrus room. The bag should have been crushed, but somehow it held firm, refusing to let the gate close.

  “Carbon nanotube lining,” Kit said, stepping through. “Ten times tougher than steel. That was my idea too. Come on.”

  Inside the papyrus room, Kit snatched my cap. He ripped open its peak and tore out a semi-circular silver disc. He grabbed Pan’s and did the same.

  “Titanium, razor edge,” he explained. “Jake, watch the skylight. Jane, guard the door.”

  “My name’s Pan. Jane’s my mum.”

  “Just guard the door.”

  Kit stepped up to the cabinet, a disc in each hand. “An alarm is going to go off,” he warned. “But no one’s going to notice one more.”

  He inhaled deeply and then swiped his hands back and forth across the glass like windscreen wipers. He stepped back as a curved panel fell out of the display case and smashed at his feet.

  Reaching through, Kit delicately lifted the “Tomb Robber’s Tale” on its stand. A flake of the fragile papyrus crumbled from the edge.

  “Jake,” he said, “there’s a book in my bag. Fetch.”

  “He’s not a dog,” Pan said.

  I didn’t care. I was fascinated, and felt a familiar thrill, only much more intense. I’d never caused trouble like this before.

  I grabbed the book from his bag – a large, dull-looking encyclopaedia.

  “Open it,” Kit said.

  “Where?”

  “It only opens in one place.”

  I did, and said something like, Whoa, that’s so cool.

  It wasn’t a book at all. It had a hollow centre, with a glass chamber kept cold by a mini refrigeration system in the spine. I held it open and Kit laid the papyrus, still flat on its stand, gently into the case.

  He gazed at it and his voice softened.

  “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” he said. “You know, papyrus documents like this can tell us more about life in Ancient Egypt than a dozen royal tombs.”

  “Why do you care?” Pan asked. “You’re a thief.”

  Kit shot her a glare, his eyelid twitching. He looked like he might attack her, so I snapped the book shut, sealing the papyrus in its chamber. It felt like a moment for a cool line.

  “Finders keepers,” I said. But no one heard.

  “What do we do now?” Pan asked. “Just walk out?”

  “Well,” Kit replied, “the bad news first. When I broke that glass, the alarm did not go off.”

  “That’s the bad news?”

  “Actually there’s only bad news. If the alarm isn’t working, that means it’s been remotely deactivated, which is a tricky thing to do. You’d have to hack the mainframe system with a binary—”

  “What does that mean?” Pan said.

  “Someone else deactivated it,” I replied, realizing.

  “Who?”

  “Whoever else is trying to steal this papyrus.”

  “You mean, right now?”

  Kit nodded. “Things are about to get wild, kids. But as my father used to say—”

  I was genuinely interested in what his father used to say, but we never found out. At that moment the skylight shattered and all hell broke loose.

  13

  Pan grabbed me and we staggered back as shards of glass rained down from above. Kit’s “book” skidded across the floor. Before I could grab it, a rope dropped from the shattered skylight and a dark figure slid down it. The person was dressed like a special forces soldier: black combat suit, black mask with black-lensed goggles and black boots that didn’t make a sound as he landed in front of the display case. He was short, but padding inside his suit made him appear bulky and dangerous.

  Was this one of the Cult of Osiris?

  Our plan had been to find the tomb and swap its mummy for our parents. But the moment I saw the black-suited figure I had a new plan. I’d beat the information out of the guy.

  I launched at him, leaping onto his back. His suit was fitted with some sort of body armour, so my attack only caused him to stagger forw
ard.

  The smoke had spread into this room now, growing thicker by the second. The black suit either couldn’t see that he’d been attacked by a boy, or didn’t care. He recovered fast, twisting and flipping me over his shoulder. I crashed to the floor, the wind knocked from my lungs.

  Kit had a go next. What I saw of the fight was incredible – a ninja-speed exchange of blows and parries, before the smoke obscured my view. A second later the black suit burst from the cloud and fled into the hall.

  “He’s got the book!” Pan hollered.

  He had the “Tomb Robber’s Tale”!

  Barely thinking, I charged from the room and along the corridor, barging tourists out of the way. Alarms rang and people kept screaming as the drugged smoke continued to drive everyone wild with fear.

  Through the smoke I caught glimpses of the black suit. He was too far ahead, moving fast.

  I had to stop him.

  I raced to the balustrade and looked along the statues and display cases that lined the atrium all the way to the museum entrance. The nearest case was directly beneath the balcony, a ten-foot drop.

  To be honest, I’m not good with heights. Just the thought of that short drop caused my grip to tighten on the rail. But I couldn’t let the black suit get away.

  I grasped the balustrade and jumped.

  I landed hard on top of the case, gripping the edge to stop myself tumbling over the side. Gritting my teeth, I tried to block out the pain and focus on the black suit. I gripped the sides of the case and rocked it first one way and then the other. It swayed, then swung over and slammed into the next display – a colossal statue of a king.

  I crash-landed in broken wood and glass, and rolled over in time to see the falling statue hit the next case, which fell into another and then another. The last exhibit in the line – a twenty-foot statue of Osiris – fell over and shattered across the museum entrance.

  The black suit staggered back from the wreckage, dropping Kit’s book. Panicking crowds scrambled past him, blocking the exit so he couldn’t get past. Instead he crouched and opened the book. Light flashed from his goggles, and I realized he’d taken a photo of the papyrus. Kit had said the document would disintegrate a few seconds after being turned. I had to get a photo too.