He could hardly believe he was heading back to Al-Qarawiyyin library. The last few years he'd spent more times in libraries than he had as an actively studying student. Sigrun watched him staring out at the countryside.
"You know, you can stay in the car."
"I'm not a child."
She raised an eyebrow at his tone. "You're not?" She asked simply, and Jonathan flushed.
"Er." He cleared his throat. "I mean, face your fears and all that nonsense."
She quietly lent beside him on the railing.
"Tell me about her."
Jonathan blew out a breath. "She's an old… fling, I guess."
"That tried to kill you?"
"That happens more often than you'd think."
"I'm beginning to see that." She said lightly.
He snorted. "We met at a party where we were both pretending to be different people. She stitched me up. We've kind of got this back-and-forth that's been going on since about 1933. It was actually fun at the beginning, if you can believe it."
"Are you worried?"
"I'm not scared of Adela, if that's what you're asking."
"That's not what I said."
"She is… I don't want any of you hurt."
"None of us are exactly strangers to risk."
"Yes, but…" How to explain it? "We worked together in 1939." The farm. The fire. The child. Jonathan tried to chase away the ghosts before his dinner gave a repeat performance. "We were there to get a… friend out of Poland, but we were too late. The safehouse had been bombed and everyone gassed, even the kids." He scuffed the toe of his boot. "I managed to bring one of the kids back, but she died as we were on the way to the hospital, poor mite."
She squeezed his hand. "I'm sorry."
"So am I." Jonathan said. "And after that, Adela become even more unpredictable. She broke away, went out on her own, went... rogue."
His nose screwed up. In their… particular vocation, becoming a rogue agent invited being burned, disavowed, and having a red notice issued.
"I used to be able to predict her, her movements and how she would react, but now…" He prided himself on his ability to read people. Ultimately it was probably the reason he was still alive, being able to accurately pinpoint exactly when to get the hell out of Dodge. So the few times he ran up against a situation he couldn't predict, it just played on his mind, not knowing. "I don't know what she's capable of anymore."
Not knowing was interminable.
"I tried to keep a track of her, but I lost her in Arabia in 1944."
The two were silent for a moment.
When Sigrun spoke, her voice was light, trying to take some of the sting out of the conversation. "When you were supposed to be in China." She shot him a sideways look out of the corner of her eye. "For the last ten years."
Jonathan smiled to himself. "I suppose based would be a better description."
She nodded, like she expected as much. "While you were working for Intelligence?"
Jonathan actually started, almost falling clear down the veranda's steps in surprise. My god, could you have a bigger tell, you fool? "What?"
"While my primary work may be in dealing with the dead, I do know what the living are like." She said. "And from my experience, there's only truly one explanation for your… set of rather unique skills."
"Maybe I'm just a ne'er-do-well." Jonathan said. "Wait, 'your experience'?"
Sigrun cocked her head to the side, an expression on her face like she already knew she was going to tell him, but was enjoying the drama just the same. A lass after his own heart. "The SIS and SOE may have provided intelligence and assets that allowed us to bomb particular train stations and ports during the war." She said delicately.
Jonathan's eyes widened with the sudden realisation that he may have met Doctor Magnusson years before he actually knew her.
Now that's a coincidence.
And of course, that was when Rick O'Connell flung open the front door, pack over his shoulder. "Car's here." He said gruffly. "Grab your stuff."
Evy would be horrified that they were taking what amounted to a small arsenal into a library, especially the oldest library in the world. The same librarian from the first time was there, and his eyebrows knotted when he recognised Jonathan and Kurt. Jonathan shot him a wide smile.
"Don't worry, old chap, the Major's been contacted and all is good." He said. The librarian nodded in his wordless way before guiding them back into the stacks. Jonathan eyed him as he left.
"Why is there always something a little bit unsettling about librarians?"
"Mum's a librarian." Alex said.
"I said what I said. The main requirement to be the curator of the British Museum is apparently to be a little bit evil."
"Don't let her hear you say that. She's been after the curator's job for years."
And they started unpacking boxes.
Oh, so many boxes. Even with how haphazardly stored a lot of them were, both Sigrun and Kurt insisted on everyone wearing cotton gloves to handle the tomes. Rick had looked at the white gloves before immediately hightailing it outside to provide armed overwatch. The chap wasn't a patient man, and after a beat Dragovitch and Hallet followed, leaving the actual scholars inside. Well, the actual scholars and Jonathan, that was.
And the real slog began. He'd almost rather be getting shot at again as he unpacked and repacked box after box. Hundreds of boxes. Five minutes in, he realised he would have made a lousy librarian. Twenty minutes in he was starting to remember exactly why he'd taken the very particular shortcuts in his short-lived archaeological career that he did.
An hour later he was slowly losing the will to live.
Jonathan repackaged the last box he'd emptied, puffing out a breath. He, Sigrun, Kurt and Alex had barely made a dent in the boxes.
"We're going to be here for years." He complained. "Everything's all over the place. Nothing's catalogued. Nothing's labelled. Alexandria is lumped in with Zanzibar, Plato in with Confucius, it's a godawful mess and someone should be taken out and shot for the state of this-"
And Alex laughed, taking some of the indignant wind out of his sails.
"You're turning into Mum."
Jonathan gave an exaggerated gasp. "How dare you." Letting himself finally feel the exhaustion and the soreness he'd accumulated from a hundred little cuts and bruises over the last month, he almost collapsed to the floor with his legs straight in front of him, flopping his head back against the wall.
"Uh, Uncle Jon?"
"Let me die here." He groaned. "Tell your mother that I want a statue of myself erected in the foyer and a day of mourning every year."
Alex snorted a laugh while Sigrun just shook her head. Jonathan despondently kicked one of the boxes, with perhaps just a tad more force than he'd intended, and there was a crunch. The edge of the box dug into a scuffed board that was covering a missing stone in the wall, and the board, finally having enough of the abuse it had undergone throughout the years, splintered.
Jonathan's eyes widened. "Oh dear."
"Jonathan!" Alex immediately said, sounding exactly like his mum.
"Kindly do not destroy the library." Sigrun said through gritted teeth.
Jonathan flushed slightly, giving an apologetic little grin as he scrambled to his knees to scoot across to the box. "What can I say, it's a family thing." He took hold of the box and carefully wiggled it. There was another splintering sound and Kurt dropped his head into his hands while Sigrun's teeth set on edge.
Jonathan sat back on his haunches, hands on his hips. "There we go, pile up a few boxes here and we just walk out like nothing happen-"
"Jonathan!"
He didn't react, brow furrowed, staring intently at the splintered board. After a moment he reached into the hole he'd accidentally created and yanked, making it bigger.
"What are you doing?" Kurt demanded. Ignoring him, Jonathan got flat to the ground, peering into the hole.
"Please no amusing surprises." He winced, reaching into the wall, fingers brushing over bugs, spiderwebs, and alarmingly furry carcases. He hoped they were carcasses. After what felt like forever his questing fingers came into contact with the sharp edges of a small box.
His companions were staring at him as he pulled the box from the wall. "Surprise?"
Alex sank down beside him as Jonathan experimentally shook the box. Something shifted around like a wedge of material had been stuffed inside.
"It's a trick box." Alex said. "We need to move the sliders in the correct way and the lid will-"
The top of the box came off accidentally in his hand. "Whoops." Jonathan said blandly as his nephew glared at him.
There was a scrap of oilskin inside, still somehow supple after all this time. Jonathan spread it out across the floor as his friends lent in.
"It's a map." Alex breathed.
Of course it bloody was.
The only thing that was moderately comforting was the fact that they had bounced around the African continent so much that anyone still following them would be utterly, utterly perplexed. Jonathan was genuinely wondering how Doctor Magnusson had explained this sudden sojourn to her university, let alone the French museum she and Kurt were supposed to be lecturing at.
The wind picked up the sand of the Sudan and flung it back in their faces, like the desert itself was trying to chase them away.
The ruins of Saba came into view, the Nubian pyramids. An Italian treasure hunter Giuseppe Ferlini had destroyed 40 of the pyramids in the 1830s, and Jonathan remembered that titbit mainly because he could remember his dear old dad distinctly saying he'd 'kick Jonathan's arse from Cairo to Shanghai' if he ever dared to 'pull a Ferlini'.
His old dad was never fond of destruction in the job and abhorred others that took that route because it was quick and easy. Mother had always said that karma would come and circle around to bite, and since Ferlini had ended up selling the artefacts he'd stolen for a pittance because the western populace refused to believe that the articles had been crafted by ancient Africans, he supposed karma had, in a way.
Actually, considering that, Jonathan had to wonder whether the Tablet would still actually be here, or would have vanished into the antiquities black market over a hundred years ago.
Sigrun looked at the oilskin she was holding. She waved to get their attention before pointing to one of the smaller structures. Jonathan was just glad to get out of the wind. He pulled his scarf down and took a generous gulp of water.
"Ah, shouldn't you be more careful with your water?" Alex asked.
"I'm not sharing when you're out." Hallet added.
Jonathan rolled his eyes. It was important to conserve water, but not over-conserve. He knew of plenty of non-native desert travellers that had died of thirst only to be found beside full water canteens, so obsessed had they been to use as little as possible that they just died of dehydration anyway. "I do know what I'm doing, despite evidence to the contrary."
"Uh huh, sure." Andy said. "Whatever you say."
The small pyramid was about the size of Jonathan's childhood bedroom, a hole in the roof where the point of the pyramid had been blasted away, and was completely bare. He stared at the walls, the animals and stories. On the surface he knew what they were, the mythology and spells they were talking about, but it didn't hold the same fascination for him as it did for Evy.
"There's nothing here."
"Way to state the obvious, Alex." Rick said.
"There's baboons." Sigrun said. "And an ibis."
Thoth's animal avatars. Jonathan's fingers trailed along the wall, and after a moment his index finger snagged in a shape carved into the wall below the ibis. A hole, like a many-pointed star. A rather familiar shape for some reason. He squinted and after a moment it hit him.
"Oh, come on."
"Jonathan?"
From his hidden pocket, Jonathan pulled out the puzzle box.
Rick blinked. "Why the hell do you still have that damned thing?"
"Old boy, I have no bloody idea anymore."
The teeth popped out and he fitted the puzzle box into the lock. Jonathan pressed down slightly and there was a satisfying clunk as it fitted neatly into the lock. He twisted, and the locking mechanism popped open with more spring than Jonathan expected. He turned it again and there was another clank as a stone slab lifted in the centre of the floor.
Goodness.
Kurt and Rick jammed picks in the gap and levered up the stone. Sigrun peered into the hole and after a moment she fished up a cloth-covered bundle, placing it reverently on the floor before she carefully pulled the cover away. Jonathan was first aware of a green glitter as the sun streamed into the room from the hole in the ceiling, and he found himself looking at a rather familiar-looking book.
Entirely too familiar, and it sent a shiver up his spine.
Alex's brow was dark. "But it looks like-" He stopped. "Why's it look like-?"
"The Emerald Tablet of Thoth." Kurt whispered. There was relief on his face that he'd finally found it, but also a bone-deep sadness.
"It says that the reader holds all worldly knowledge." Jonathan said wistfully, running his hand over the hieroglyphics on the frontispiece. "The secret of alchemy."
"You're not turning lead into gold." Sigrun said sternly.
He made a face at her. "Spoilsport."
"It's locked." Alex said. "The book's locked." He looked up. "Well, what do we do now?"
His brother-in-law chucked the puzzle box clear over their heads at Jonathan, who barely managed the catch before it smashed into his face.
"Try the key."
"So what do you think's in there?" Alex asked, eyes bright. "All worldly knowledge? There's got to be more in there than just alchemy."
"Just alchemy?" Hallet blinked. "You really did grow up privileged."
Alex rolled his eyes.
"Thoth was also god of medicine and knowledge. Maybe there is more than just gold." Jonathan said.
"More than gold? You're finally maturing." Rick said. "Like what?"
Jonathan shrugged. "The cure for the common cold?" Companies would kill each other to be the one that held the secret to curing the flu. It'd be a bloodbath.
"Immortality?" Kurt offered. "Eternal youth could be helpful."
"Until all the people you know start popping their clogs and you're watching everyone you loved or ever knew die." Jonathan said.
"D'you think that'll matter to, like, the House of Lords?" Alex asked. "They already want to stay in power for as long as they possibly can."
Jonathan winced. The last thing the world needed was the top 1% to have the secret to immortality and reign over the plebians for all of eternity. As it was, the only way they were going to get many of them out of office was in a coffin.
"Rumours say the Tablet's supposed to contain great scientific secrets to the universe. The ultimate secret to Creation could come in handy." Kurt suggested. "Or… time travel."
"Time travel?" Jonathan's eyebrows rose. "I never thought you'd be a science fiction-type chap."
"Regeneration. I'd like to grow limbs." Hallet said with a gleam to his eye. "Like a lizard."
"When they're cut off? Or like extra?" Alex asked.
"Yeah, like you'd turn down a third hand."
"Andy, go and help Vasily with armed overwatch." Sigrun's eyes narrowed, shutting down the boys' conversation before the direction went too lewd. "All right, this is absolutely ludicrous."
"But can you imagine the wars it could start? If only the rumours of what the Tablet could do got out into the general populace, it would be pandemonium." Kurt argued. "There are always people fantastical enough to believe in the esoteric, which would lead to mob mentality even with the sceptics. The world would cannibalise itself."
And Jonathan started to wonder maybe, just maybe that's what Mr Talbot had been talking about all those months ago. Kurt and Sigrun exchanged a glance. Jonathan stared down at the Book that was sitting deceptively innocently on the floor. All of Thoth's knowledge, eh?
Stop being a baby and just open it.
The key fit neatly into the lock, and as he twisted, the mechanism sprang open.
"Well, that's a coincidence." Rick said, echoing Jonathan's thoughts. He had in his possession a key that had now opened not one, not two, but three ancient Egyptian tomes. Rather a coincidence. Jonathan popped it from the lock and studied it for a long moment before folding away the teeth and popping it back in his pocket. He touched the gleaming green, and tried to wrap his head around the fact that it was composed of complete sheets of gemstone.
"Open it already!" Alex demanded.
"So bloody impatient." Jonathan shook his head. "Youth is wasted on the young."
"Like you'd really do anything different if you were 20 again." Rick snorted.
"Uncle Jon!" Alex protested. "Dad!"
Sigrun sighed, sitting back and rubbing her temples.
Jonathan carefully opened the book, the emerald pages heavy and cold to the touch. Part of him was still incredibly doubtful that it actually contained what legend said it did, but hell, he'd seen a bloke brought back from the dead by his baby sister reading a similar book, so what the hell did he know.
"What does it say?" Alex demanded, and Jonathan got the distinct impression that if he didn't move faster, his nephew would shoulder-check him out of the way. He flipped back to the first page. After all, he wasn't quite insane enough to start a book in the middle. Jonathan ran his fingers lightly over the engraved characters, running the words around his mouth.
At least he was ready if bloody Amenophus raised his feathered head.
"Uncle Jon," Alex whined.
"Hold your horses, young man. Your mother was the one to impress upon me the importance of not reading aloud from a book of spells."
In the beginning the world was but chaos.
Huh. He knew this creation myth.
And from the chaos the Sun rose over the primordial waters-
Jonathan blinked, suddenly a strange fog seeming to settle behind his eyes. He scrubbed at his eyes, feeling decidedly odd. Sigrun caught his moment of disorientation and frowned at him.
"What's wrong?"
Jonathan seemed to come back to himself with a start. "Right as rain, old thing. Probably just the sleep deprivation."
Her look said that she blatantly didn't believe him.
"All right, bag it up." Rick said. "Let's do the dramatic reading later."
Darkness was creeping across the sand when they exited the pyramid, and Jonathan blinked in confusion. His brother-in-law stopped abruptly beside him, staring into the setting sun.
"What the hell-?"
"It's about bloody time!" Andy Hallet marched across the sand towards them. "What the hell were you doing in there?"
"What're you talking about?" Alex asked. "We only just went in! You only just saw us."
"Are you- You've been in there for hours!"
"Are you insane?" Rick demanded. "It's like ten in the morning!"
Andy just stared at O'Connell, his mouth agape.
Jonathan pushed his sleeve up and squinted at his wristwatch. "A quarter past."
"Close enough."
"Comrades." Dragovitch said cautiously, in a grave and deliberate way that Jonathan had never heard before. And judging by Kurt and Sigrun's expressions, they hadn't heard it either. "It's almost eight o'clock in the evening."
Jonathan frowned, looking down at his watch once more. The hands sat stubbornly at fifteen minutes past ten. He was aware of his other pyramid companions also checking their watches.
"That's not possible."
"You've been in that pyramid for over ten hours."
"That's not possible. We were in there for maybe an hour." Jonathan argued.
In retaliation Hallet thrust his wristwatch under Jonathan's nose. True to his words, his watch said 7.55.
"That's not possible." He whispered. Of course, he'd lost chunks of time before, but he tended to know exactly what had happened in the lead up to it and could extrapolate from there.
Hallet waved his other hand out for emphasis. "Look around you, you utter raging bell-end! It's night!"
"We were in there for like an hour!" Alex said.
"Ten! More or less a whole bloody day!"
"If we were in there for ten hours, why didn't you come drag us out?" Jonathan asked.
Hallet jabbed a finger painfully into his chest. "Because we bloody couldn't!"
Everything went silent.
"Explain." Sigrun said quietly.
"We could not physically step into the pyramid." Dragovitch said, again in that strange serious voice. "Two hours after you entered the pyramid, I attempted to follow. I… could not step over the threshold."
"What do you mean?" Her voice was flat.
"I mean I could not physically cross the threshold." The Russian stressed. "I could not lift my feet past the doorway. It was almost painful, like-" He searched for the words. "Like being stood barefoot in the snow for so long that there's no real feeling anymore, but you're sure your soles will peel away if you move."
Jonathan blinked at the strangely specific example, but remembered that he'd once had a case of trench foot so bad that his skin simply sloughed off.
"I tried to, too." Hallet said. "It was like pins and needles all over and I couldn't move."
"We tried the radio." Dragovitch said.
Everyone looked at Rick, or more precisely, the field radio slung over his shoulder. "Nothing came through." He said doubtfully.
"Da." Dragovitch said. "We could not find you on any channel, and the one you had been on was just… a peculiar type of static, as if almost… you were in the air."
Rick and Jonathan exchanged a look. He knew his brother-in-law was wondering if this whole issue had started when the Tablet was opened. Prior experience, you know.
Andy Hallet was indeed impressively grumpy. "At least say you've got the damn book thing so this wasn't a complete waste of time."
"You sound a touch bitter."
"I will end you."
Dragovitch gripped the kid's shoulder in a calm the hell down way. "Walk it off, lieutenant."
"But I just-"
"Walk it off." The stern grave voice was absolutely unnerving for someone who was normally so full of life and joie de virve. Jonathan wondered if this was what he had been like in the military before he had apparently lost his marbles in the line of duty. With an annoyed huff, the kid spun on his heel and strode off. "He's merely concerned."
"So am I." Sigrun said. "Vasily, I swear we were only in there for perhaps an hour."
The Russian shrugged. "I don't know what else to tell you, Magnus."
"All right." She sighed. "Let's return to our hotel rooms and properly examine the -"
"Emerald Tablet."
There was a chorus of safeties being thumbed off and Jonathan jumped slightly as his companions were suddenly bristling with raised guns. Even Sigrun had whipped a revolver from her canvas bag. He couldn't help but sigh aloud as he spotted Adela Katz.
She noticed the sigh. "Always good to see you as well, Jonathan."
"I'd say it's a pleasure but I'd be lying."
"I want the Tablet."
"So?" Jonathan shrugged. "It seems, my dear, that I'm not exactly quite at a complete disadvantage this time."
"Is that so?" Adela asked sweetly.
And that was when one of her men stepped out, machete firmly held against Andy Hallet's throat.