Seven Ancient Wonders - Matthew Reilly [74]
Lily noticed some design plans for a quarry-mine in a place called Nubia, with four rising levels and lots of water-driven booby traps. Marked on the plans were descriptions of all the traps, and in the case of a set of concealed stepping-stones, five numbers written in Egyptian hieroglyphics: 1-3-4-1-4. Wizard placed those plans in a file marked ‘Imhotep V’.
She also saw a really old drawing that looked like an ancient game of Snakes and Ladders. It was titled: ‘Waterfall Entrance— Refortification by Imhotep III in the time of Ptolemy Soter’ and it looked like this:
Wizard noticed Lily’s interest and so he taught her things about the various Imhoteps.
Imhotep III, for instance, lived during the time of Alexander the Great and his friend, Ptolemy I, and he was called ‘the Master Moat Builder’—he had been known to divert entire rivers in order to provide his structures with uncrossable moats.
‘This waterfall entrance,’ Wizard said, ‘must have been a beautiful decorative cascade at a palace in ancient Babylon, near modern-day Baghdad in Iraq. The lines dictate the course of the flowing water. Sadly, in all the excavations of Babylon over the years, it has never been found. Such a shame.’
Lily spent the rest of that day curled up behind some boxes in the corner of Wizard’s study, reading all manner of parchments, absolutely rapt.
She hardly even noticed when Zoe came in and started chatting with Wizard. It was only when West’s name came up that she started listening more closely.
Zoe said, ‘It’s been good to see him again. Although he seems to have changed since we studied together in Dublin. He’s become even quieter than he already was. I also hear he’s quit the Army.’
Lily listened, although she never looked up from the parchment she appeared to be reading.
Wizard leaned back. ‘Gosh, Dublin. When was that—1989? You two were so young. Jack’s been down a long road since then.’
‘Tell me.’
‘He quit the Army soon after Desert Storm. But to understand why, you have to understand why he joined the Army in the first place: to both please and spite his father.
‘Jack’s father was a great soldier in his time, but Jack was better. His father had wanted him to join the military straight after high school, but Jack wanted to study, to go to university. But he acquiesced to his father’s wishes . . . and quickly became a much more formidable soldier than his father had ever been.
‘Jack rose through the ranks, was fast-tracked to the SAS Regiment. He particularly excelled at desert missions; he even set a new record on the desert survival course, lasting 44 days without being captured.
‘But unlike his father, Jack didn’t like what they were turning him into: a killing machine, an exceptionally good killing machine. His superiors knew this, and they were worried that he’d quit—that was when they sent him to study with me in Dublin. They hoped it would satisfy his intellectual needs for the time being, and then he’d stay on with the Regiment. And I suppose it did satisfy him, for a time.’
‘Hold on a minute,’ Zoe said. ‘I need to backtrack for a moment. Jack told me once that his father was American. But he joined the Australian Army?’
‘That’s right,’ Wizard said. ‘Thing is, Jack’s mother is not American. To please his father, he joined the military, but to spite his father, he joined the military of his mother’s birth-nation: Australia.’
‘Ah. . . ’ Zoe said. ‘Go on.’
Wizard said, ‘Anyway, as you know, Jack’s always had a sharp mind, and he started to look at Army life critically. Personally, I believe he just enjoyed studying ancient history and archaeology more.
‘In any case, things started to go downhill when Jack’s superiors sent him to a series of multinational special forces exercises at Coronado in 1990—exercises hosted by the Americans at their SEAL base, where they invited crack teams from all their allies to partake in high-end wargames. It’s a huge opportunity for smaller nations, so the Australians sent West. In 1990, the exercises