Treasure Hunters: Danger Down the Nile Read online

  Beck and I were sitting on the edge of the sofa in the five-star suite’s living room. The rug on the floor looked like it used to belong to Aladdin. I half expected it to start flying.

  We were reviewing Mom’s thumb-drive video on the room’s plasma-screen TV. Beck kept punching Rewind and replaying one bit over and over and over.

  Finally, after the umpteenth rewind, Beck tossed the remote control into the sofa cushions. “What does it mean, Bick? All that junk about the four seasons and Julius Caesar and the number thirteen?”

  “It means,” said Tommy, coming into the room, “we need to hit the streets of Cairo and find Bela Kilgore.”

  “Seriously?” said Storm. “We’re just going to hike around the streets of Egypt’s capital—which, by the way, is home to over sixteen million people—and ask total strangers, ‘Hey, have you ever heard of a lady named Bela Kilgore?’ ”

  Tommy thought about that for a second. “Guess we might be here for a while.”

  “I don’t care how long it takes,” I said, “or how impossible it seems. We need to find this Bela person so we can help Mom! I really, really think ‘Aunt’ Bela is another CIA spook who worked with Mom.”

  “We know, Bick,” said Beck. “You’ve told us. Over and over and over.”

  (It’s true. But at least I didn’t make warbled rewind noises like that video clip Beck made me watch over and over and over.)

  “Come on, you guys,” said Tommy. “Let’s hit the streets. We have sixteen million people to talk to.”

  CHAPTER 23

  The four of us crowded onto a bus with an eager group of American and British tourists decked out in plaid shorts and sun hats and made the fourteen-kilometer trip from the hotel, across the Nile River, and into the heart of Cairo.

  We got off the bus in Tahrir Square, not far from the Egyptian Museum, where treasures from the tomb of King Tut—the boy pharaoh who died when he was just nineteen—are on permanent display, including his famous burial mask, which is made out of 24.5 pounds of pure gold! I read in a book once that King Tut might have been murdered. If that story is true, maybe the bad guys wanted his solid-gold mask.

  Anyway, Cairo was a sometimes scary, sometimes cool place.

  For instance, in what was called a “legal graffiti zone” near Tahrir Square, the walls were covered with slogans scrawled in Arabic and giant caricatures of the heroes and villains from the Arab Spring uprisings. Beck’s favorite, naturally, was the portrait of an artist with a paintbrush standing up to a riot-squad trooper with a billy club. Like I said: cool, but a little scary.

  The streets were bustling with people. Donkey carts and taxicabs fought one another for room on the extremely crowded streets.

  Storm coached us all to greet everyone we met with a “As-salamu alaykum,” which means “Peace be upon you.” We also had to smile, she said.

  “In Egypt, people who don’t smile are considered arrogant, rude, and aggressive.”

  And so we smiled and asked, “Do you know where we might find a woman named Bela Kilgore?”

  The Egyptians we met all smiled back and shook their heads.

  Yes, we were basically trying to find a grain of sand in the Sahara Desert.

  But the search for “Aunt Bela”—the only clue we had that might, hopefully, lead us to rescuing Mom—kept driving us deeper and deeper into the heart of Cairo.

  CHAPTER 24

  We ventured into the Khan el-Khalili, one of Cairo’s major souks.

  A souk is an open-air marketplace or bazaar. Small shops were crowded inside the Khan el-Khalili’s ancient fourteenth-century walls. Vendors sat cross-legged in stalls selling all sorts of stuff: brightly colored spices, brass bracelets, teapots, T-shirts, postcards, and souvenirs.

  “The Khan el-Khalili dates back to 1382,” said Storm. “At one time, this marketplace also had a monopoly on all the spices moving from the Eastern World into the West. This single souk’s stranglehold on the spice trade is why Columbus set sail to the West, hoping to find an alternate route to the East.”

  The market was a chaotic maze of narrow alleys. All around us, I could hear goldsmiths hammering out trinkets and rings as shopkeepers hawked their wares and haggled over prices.

  But what really struck me was the number of street children running around without any parents. A lot of them were my age or younger. All of them looked like they were starving.

  Remember, not too long ago, the four of us had basically been street urchins outside Grand Central Terminal—homeless beggars eating doughnuts out of garbage cans.

  So we invited a group of kids to join us in a café, where we all feasted on sticky sesame bars and basboussa (cake soaked with syrup).

  As we were finishing up our Egyptian pastries with our new friends, a mysterious man in a tasseled red fez (a felt hat that sort of looked like an upside-down sand bucket) approached our table.

  “Excuse me, are you by any chance the Kidd children?” he asked as he stroked his chin thoughtfully.

  “Who wants to know?” said Tommy, standing up from the table.

  “I am Makalani.” Our visitor bowed slightly and touched the chest of his robe, where I noticed a stain and squiggly piece of dry pasta. Apparently, Mr. Makalani was a messy eater. I could relate.

  “I trust you are enjoying your time in Cairo?” he said with a smile. He was missing a couple of teeth.

  “The pastries are good,” said Beck, licking her fingers to make sure she got every particle of powdered sugar.

  “And our hotel is awesome!” I said.

  “Extremely swanky,” added Tommy. “The Mena House out by the pyramids. Ever heard of it?”

  “Oh, yes. Very, very nice. Your mother’s aunt Bela would be most pleased.”

  “Wait a second,” I said. “You know Bela Kilgore?”

  The man in the fez smiled. “Oh, yes, Kidd children. I know many, many things. Many, many people.”

  CHAPTER 25

  “Where is she?” demanded Beck, forgetting all that stuff about “peace be upon you” Storm had taught us earlier.

  “Ah—you are eager to find this Bela Kilgore, yes?”

  “Yes!”

  Makalani licked his lips as if they were dry.

  “I am told the coffee in this café is quite good. The baklava pastries as well.”

  Tommy whipped out a crisp one-hundred-dollar bill. “You tell us how to find Bela Kilgore and you can buy yourself a gallon of espresso and a couple of those fruity cream pies in the window, too.”

  “You are most generous. Therefore, it is my humble pleasure to inform you that you will find your mother’s aunt Bela at the Giza pyramids, so very near your current hotel accommodations. She is, as they say, undercover—pretending to work at the Great Pyramids as a tour guide.”

  “But she’s really with the CIA?” I blurted out. “Right?”

  Beck kicked my shin under the table.

  Makalani raised both shoulders and held out his hands. “More than what I have already told you I cannot say.”

  For a second the Egyptian in the Shriner hat reminded me of Yoda.

  Makalani plucked the one-hundred-dollar bill out of Tommy’s hand. “Enjoy your visit to the pyramids, Kidd children. I trust it will be very… educational. Maa salama. Go with safety.”

  He bowed again, backed out of the coffee shop, and vanished into the teeming throngs on the sidewalk.

  “We need to catch that bus back to the hotel,” said Tommy. “Now!”

  “Wait a second,” said Beck, gesturing toward our wide-eyed young guests, still crowded around the table. “You have another one of those Benjamins?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “These guys need to have a good dinner to go with their dessert.”

  “Maybe a little lamb kebab, baba ghanoush, samak makli, and tahini?” added Storm, who sometimes uses her photographic memory to memorize menus.

  Tommy winked. “Definitely.”

  In fact, he gave the kids two one-hundred-dollar bills.

>   They danced in the streets with joy; we headed back to Giza to see two of the Seven Wonders of the World.

  The Great Pyramids and Bela Kilgore—the lady all of us were wondering about!

  CHAPTER 26

  A very happy man running a cart in the bazaar arranged a camel tour of the Giza pyramids for us with a young guide who, he said, “knows everything and everybody.”

  So the four of us climbed aboard our humpbacked so-called ships of the desert and made ourselves as comfortable as you can in a Bedouin saddle—which is basically a clunky wooden chair resting on top of the camel’s hump and a brightly colored, braided blanket with lots of dangling tassels that look like extra camel tails.

  “Follow me, if you please, Kidds,” said our tour guide, Bubu, a wiry boy about my age in a turban and a loose-fitting, long shirt. His camel’s saddle had more brightly colored pom-poms and decorations than any of ours. “I will show you all three pyramids, the great and mighty Sphinx, even the tomb of Queen Hetepheres! Might I remind you that tipping of your tour guide is greatly appreciated? I will accept shoes, watches, jewelry, and even cash.”

  I felt a little sorry for Storm’s camel. She knew more about the pyramids than the camel did, even though the camel had taken the tour with Bubu a billion times. It must have been horrible for the poor camel’s self-esteem.

  “Did you know,” said Storm, “that it took over twenty years to build the Great Pyramid of Cheops? It is the oldest of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World and the only one still largely intact.”

  Storm’s camel bellowed sort of like a Wookie.

  I think he was as bored as I was, but, hey, this is invaluable material to help your teachers rationalize why our adventure is okay for you to read in school. It might even be worthy of a classroom discussion or a project. You could make a pyramid out of sugar cubes and Elmer’s Glue. Just don’t do it outside unless you want ants to attend your miniature pharaoh’s funeral.

  Anyway, Storm babbled on.

  “Due to the angle of the sides in relation to its latitude, the Great Pyramid casts no shadow at noon during the spring equinox.…”

  “So, Bubu,” Beck called out to our tour guide, more or less cutting Storm off before I fell asleep and tumbled off my camel saddle. “Have you ever heard of another tour guide named Bela Kilgore?”

  “I’m afraid I do not know of her. I hope this will in no way affect my tip?”

  “If you knew how to find Bela Kilgore,” I said, “your tip would be huge.”

  “I see. And what can you tell me of this woman?”

  “Not much,” said Beck. “Only that she loves Julius Caesar.”

  “Is that so?” said Bubu. “You know, I have heard that Julius Caesar was a great admirer of Pharaoh Cheops.” I figured Bubu was trying to outdo Storm in the pyramid-trivia department.

  “Who says that?” asked Storm.

  “Many, many intelligent people. They tell me that Julius Caesar used to sneak into the tomb of the pharaoh with Cleopatra when the two of them were dating. There are many secret tunnels and passageways for royals seeking privacy.”

  Storm blew out her lips and made a camel noise. “Bull hockey,” she said.

  “Oh, no. This is very, very true. Like your Bela Kilgore, Queen Cleopatra loved Julius Caesar.”

  Beck and I shot each other a glance.

  “Would perhaps you four wish to explore the insides of the pyramid to see if what I say is true?” asked Bubu. “It can be arranged. For a non-refundable fee, of course.”

  “Let’s do it,” I said.

  Hey, it was worth a shot. So far, it was our only connection between Egypt and Julius Caesar. Besides, what’d we have to lose poking around inside a pyramid?

  CHAPTER 27

  “Please remove your shoes before entering the Great Pyramid of Khufu,” said Bubu, who was holding the reins to all four camels outside the entrance.

  “Seriously?” said Tommy. He was sporting an awesome new pair of Nikes.

  “It is customary when entering a mosque,” said Storm, “to remove any shoes, sandals, boots, or slippers. They carry dirt from the street.”

  “Um, is the pyramid a mosque?” asked Beck.

  “No,” said Bubu, “but, for many Egyptians, it is a holy and sacred place.”

  “Then how come all these other tourists are wearing shoes?”

  “I suspect they were raised, as you say, in a barn.”

  “Come on, you guys,” I said, peeling off my sneaks. “We need to hustle. Mom’s aunt Bela could be inside.”

  “Oh, yes,” said Bubu. “Now that I think on it, there is a woman named Bela who sells Julius Caesar souvenirs down in the subterranean chamber.”

  Tommy, Storm, and Beck quickly pulled off their shoes, too.

  “I will wait here with the camels,” said Bubu. “Good luck on your quest to find your lady friend.”

  We ducked our heads and entered the long, cramped passageway that reminded me of a shaft in a coal mine, except the walls were brown instead of black. There was a path of wooden planks on the ground, and the tunnel was well lit—so you could see just how cramped and claustrophobic it was.

  To reach the subterranean chamber where Bubu said Bela Kilgore had set up shop, we would need to work our way down what is known as the Descending Passage.

  But there was a velvet rope blocking access to it.

  “The general public is not allowed into the subterranean chamber,” said a semiofficial-looking Egyptian in a military shirt and beret. He also looked like he hadn’t shaved in maybe a week.

  “We’re looking for Bela Kilgore,” I said. “We’re with Bubu. The tour guide?”

  “Oh,” said the military man, his eyes darting back and forth. “Bubu? Why did you not say so in the first place?” He took one last look around, then raised the velvet rope. “Hurry. Maa salama. Go with safety.”

  We began our descent to the restricted room underneath the colossal pyramid.

  “When we reach the bottom,” said Storm, “there will be two million blocks of stone weighing six-and-a-half-million tons over our heads.”

  “Good to know,” said Beck.

  Finally, after practically duckwalking down the cramped corridor, we stepped into the subterranean chamber.

  You guessed it.

  The room was completely empty.

  CHAPTER 28

  Breathing hard, we raced back up the tight passageway.

  When we reached the velvet rope, the so-called security guard wasn’t there anymore.

  “You think the guard and Bubu were working together?” I wondered out loud.

  “Well, duh!” said Beck. “Bubu sent us into that pyramid pit on a wild-goose chase.”

  “What?” said Tommy. “Why?”

  “I’m not sure, but I have a hunch.”

  We stepped out of the pyramid and into the blindingly bright sun.

  Bubu was gone. Our camels were gone.

  “My Nikes!” groaned Tommy.

  And, yes, our shoes were gone, too.

  “We got played,” said Storm, who, from the look in her eyes, was revisiting everything she remembered about our guide. “Bubu only said all that stuff about Julius Caesar after we fed him the information about Aunt Bela and Caesar.”

  “Wow,” said Tommy. “Do we still have to tip him?”

  “No way,” said Beck. “But we do have to hike back to our hotel.”

  The Mena House wasn’t very far away, but the walk would’ve been even easier with shoes.

  Eventually, we made it back to the luxurious grounds of our posh hotel.

  “Now what do we do?” I mumbled as we made our way from the gardens into the hotel’s elegant hallways.

  “Put on other shoes,” said Tommy. “Good thing I packed, like, six pairs of kicks.”

  The instant Tommy opened the door to our suite, all of us stopped worrying about our missing shoes.

  Because our hotel room was beyond trashed.

  CHAPTER 29

&nbs
p; While we were off in Cairo and riding camels and hiking down to the subterranean chamber of the Great Pyramid, somebody had rifled through everything in our room.

  Lamps were knocked over. Drawers were flung open. Clothes were scattered everywhere.

  “W-w-what kind of inhuman, lowlife scum would do this?” I stammered when I discovered what was missing in the living room. “They stole the thumb drive with Mom’s video!”

  “The map to King Solomon’s Mines is gone, too!” reported Beck, who’d been checking the hotel closet safe. Its door had been crowbarred off its hinges.

  “What about the other three maps?” I asked.

  “I have them,” said Storm, patting a pocket.

  “What? Why’d you only take three?” Beck demanded. “The thieves stole the most important one: the map that went with the King Solomon’s Mines paperback book Dad hid in the safe-deposit box!”

  “I have my reasons.”

  “What reasons?”

  “I’ll tell you later.”

  “Later?” Beck was turning a shade a purple very similar to that of an eggplant. “Later will be too late!”

  Tommy stepped between Storm and Beck. “You guys? We need to focus our energies on what’s important. Finding Bela Kilgore. Rescuing Mom.”

  Here’s a shocker: When Tommy said that, he sounded exactly like our dad. When things got tough, Dad always kept calm and carried on.

  “I know you’re upset, Beck,” Tommy continued. “You too, Storm, even though, you know, you do a better job of hiding it. But, remember—we’ll get through this thing—if we stick together.”

  Beck raised her hand.