The Masks of Nyarlathotep: Egypt part 4

The Diary of Syed Hussein

Wednesday 8^th October 2008:

Whilst we are at the Ibn Tulun mosque we are given a tour by Samir, the young imam who is the only person there who seems willing to talk to us. This does not go down well with his older colleague! The mosque is large and finely decorated. There is a central courtyard in the middle of which is a large covered fountain for ritual ablutions. Around the courtyard is a colonnade with a wooden frieze running all the way around it. On the frieze are painted large parts of the Quran. Samir says that the wood is from Noah’s Ark which came to rest here (allegedly!) We need to know what is in the mosque treasury, or khizanaa. Apparently the mosque was refurbished a couple of years ago – maybe the museum has a catalogue of the khizanaa contents.

Adam senses a source of fire-based power at the pulpit. There is also something in the basement of the khizanaa which is ‘unclean’. Before we can investigate further Elisa gets a phone call from Alex asking for assistance – he needs a case for carrying some valuable documents.

We drive to the museum to collect document cases and some preservation materials and then off to meet Alex in a tailor’s shop. When we arrive there are a huge number of cats loitering outside the shop. John keeps the tailor occupied buying clothes whilst Sandy and Fatima go upstairs. Alex has found Jan van Heuvelen. Jan has eight scrolls acquired from the Clive dig and he has been working to preserve them. The scrolls contain stories of the Black Pharaoh and his cult throughout Ancient Egyptian history. They also contain various spells. Jan removed a statuette and the scrolls from the top of the sarcophagus which the Clive expedition found. Clive told Jan to do this, knowing that it would curse him to do so. Jan was allowed to leave the dig with the statuette and the scrolls and then blamed for the theft by Clive. It is obvious that Jan was used by Clive as a fall guy throughout – first to trigger the curse and then to cover up for the disappearance of the items from the dig.

Fatima starts packing up the scrolls into the document cases – some are in poor condition, one especially so, but Fatima manages to move them with no damage. When Alex tells Jan that Fatima is from the museum Jan starts to look worried and asks which museum. Jan quickly becomes frantic at the thought of the scrolls being taken from him and Alex has to restrain him. Jan is screaming by this stage so I go upstairs and help Sandy to restrain Jan whilst Elisa arrives to sedate him. Alex meanwhile retrieves the statuette. Whilst Jan is ‘sleeping’ a cat, which has snuck into the room, attacks him.

We get Jan into the car (the cat gets in as well) and drive to the museum. Alex explains that the curse which has befallen Jan is from Bast (Egyptian cat goddess) – hence the hostility of the cats. Alex thinks that there is information on the scrolls which will be of use to us in stopping the Brotherhood of the Black Pharaoh. I suggest that we get the preservation done on the scrolls and then copy them. We can then hand the scrolls and Jan over to the cats(!) and everyone is happy. However, the others think that we should try to help Jan and find out if he has any other information we could use. We will need to find a safe and secluded location where we can hold Jan whilst we try to get some sense out of him.

On arrival at the museum we take the scrolls to Ali Khafour. Five of them are in good enough condition as they are so Fatima takes them to make copies. Ali takes charge of the conservation of the other three and will make copies of them as they become available. Meanwhile, Adam takes a look at the catalogue from the Ibn Tulun mosque. There is a medallion from the Abassid Caliphate (10^th century) and something called the ‘Girdle of Nitokris’. The girdle is a narrow band with a gold chain attached and an uncut ruby set into it – it does not look Ancient Egyptian in style. The other items in the catalogue are documents of Islamic origin, most no older than 400 years save for one very old Quran. Fatima remembers talking to the conservator who worked on the girdle and he said that the ruby seemed to change shape from day to day!

I suggest that if we need a safe and private location to hold Jan van Heuvelen then a boat would suit our purposes. John goes to the embassy to see what he can arrange and he manages to acquire a seven-berth cruiser, the Isis, which we have for one week. We must take very good care of it – perhaps it belongs to the ambassador? John also has packages for Elisa, Adam and Alex. They are all books – Adam gets ‘Monsters and their Kinde’ from the Library of the Office of Occult Security, dated from the 1940s, no author listed. Alex gets ‘The Book of the Dead’, a collection of parchments written in hieroglyphs and bound into book form, also from the Library of the Office of Occult Security and dated from the 1940s. Elisa receives the ‘Book of Eibon’, written in English and also from the Library of the Office of Occult Security, dated 1940s.

Thursday 9^th and Friday 10^th October 2008:

We take to the river in the Isis with Jan van Heuvelen to let the medical types go to work on his brain! Fatima remains in the museum copying the scrolls. Sandy and John take to the streets of Cairo to try to find Omar Shafiq, the policeman who was working with Faraz Najir and who saw Rifaat Abaza disappear somewhere near the Sphinx. Meanwhile the rest of us stay on the Isis and take care of Jan. Elisa, Adam and Alex take the lead on this while I keep the boat running.

I don’t really have a lot to do on the boat – the controls are so simple that a trained monkey could run them – so I have plenty of time to think over the couple of days we spend on the river. After a chat with Elisa and Alex I am becoming convinced that the big screen show put on for us by Nyharuthotep was a mock-up. Apparently hunting horrors and shoggoths are allergic to or killed by sunlight so they could not have acted as they did in the footage we were shown. Additionally there is evidence that Aubrey Penhew was still alive after the events on the screen are supposed to have occurred. Jack Brady (the bodyguard for Roger Carlyle, hired by his parents) also believed that many of the expedition survived the trip into Kenya.

These revelations, coupled with the peace and tranquillity of two days on the Nile in which to reflect, allow me to come to terms with what I have witnessed over the last few days and I am able to gather my thoughts and achieve something approaching sanity! I am now convinced that my encounter with the mind of Nyharuthotep has given me a (possibly unique) insight into the strategy of the Black Pharaoh. I know how he thinks, I know how he uses humankind to further his own dark ends, I know how he deceives and manipulates in order to make us mortals do his bidding whether we wish to or not. These insights I am sure will prove vital in our efforts to thwart his machinations. It may even be possible for us to turn the tables on him and deceive him into thinking we are doing what he wants while we are, in fact, unravelling his careful plans under his very nose. The horror and revulsion which I first experienced when I came to realise what we are facing has now given way to a new sense of confidence and power in our abilities. I now have belief that we may yet prevail despite the apparent odds stacked against us.

While I am lost in introspection at the Isis’ controls, Adam, Elisa and Alex are tasked with convincing Jan van Heuvelen to hand over the scrolls and the statuette to Bast himself and so lift the curse upon him. We offer advice to Adam, the resident psychoanalyst, as to how best to proceed with this and then he starts to work on Jan using magical enhancement to boost his persuasion skills. However, Adam is unable to persuade Jan to part with the artefacts voluntarily. He is apparently convinced that he must complete work on the artefacts himself in order to salvage his reputation amongst the archaeological fraternity. Unfortunately for Jan it seems that we will have to return the scrolls and the statuette to Bast ourselves and leave Jan to the ‘mercy’ of the cats.

Meanwhile John and Sandy ask around the vicinity of Faraz Najir’s shop for news of Omar Shafiq. They also ask at the Interior Ministry where they discover that Omar retired from the police force and is now working as a private detective in Cairo and they are given his address. John and Sandy go to Omar’s office and Omar, after checking that nobody is observing them, agrees to answer questions if John and Sandy will hire his detective services at the standard rate of 2000 Egyptian pounds (whatever that is in real money! 2000 Syrian pounds is about 20 quid – I suspect Egyptian pounds are worth more). Omar says that Najir was a petty criminal. The curio shop was his main business, but he acquired merchandise in a variety of ways. Najir and Shafiq helped each other out with information and job opportunities. Shafiq did not know the details of Najir’s interest, but agreed when Najir asked him to follow Rifaat Abaza.

Shafiq tailed Rifaat Abaza for some time and acquired quite an amount of intelligence. Rifaat Abaza has a villa in the Maadi district where he lives alone – no wife or kids. Abaza is highly connected in Egyptian and international circles. He entertains the likes of the Mubarak family and the British ambassador and hires help at the villa when he is entertaining – possibly a window there to infiltrate his house, worth considering. Najir wants to know when Abaza is out and Shafiq tells him that Abaza is out every month at the dark of the moon. On one of these occasions Shafiq followed Abaza for about an hour and then lost him. Abaza had met up with a dozen riff-raff and then Shafiq saw them going between the paws of the Sphinx between 1 and 2 am at which point they vanished. Shafiq waited and searched, but there was no sign of them. Weeks later, after Najir was dead, Shafiq returned to the Sphinx and searched between the paws, but found nothing – no door, no hidden shaft.

John and Sandy visit the Sphinx in the middle of the day and search thoroughly, but there is no sign of any door or pit. John then calls me on the boat with an update. Alex has gone ashore to visit the Bast temple and later on he also calls the boat to check whether we have been able to persuade Jan of the error of his ways. Since we have not, Alex takes the statuette and the scrolls to the Bast temple since Fatima and Ali Khafour have finished work restoring and copying the scrolls. Fatima goes with Alex to help carry the scrolls and the statuette, but only Alex enters the temple.

Late on Friday we return the boat (in perfect nick!) to the embassy and drop off Jan van Heuvelen at the US embassy. Then we all meet up at the hotel to examine the copies of the scrolls and check out the contents of the eighth scroll which had been in such poor condition as to be unreadable before restoration. The eighth scroll is an account by Luvet-Keraph, high priestess of Bastet, of an attempt to resurrect Nitikris. The resurrection ritual apparently involved the use of three items – a circlet, a girdle and a necklace. This resurrection attempt was foiled and Keraph hid the items away as they were impossible to destroy. Presumably the girdle is the item referred to in the catalogue from the Ibn Tulun khizanaa. The circlet would be the ‘crown of the Black Pharaoh’ which Faraz Najir stole from Rifaat Abaza, but where it is now is anyone’s guess – maybe Abaza recovered it at some point? As for the necklace, who knows? Could it be the one given to John Zwaiter by the priestess Ayesha? Perhaps Ali Khafour could help us determine this. Is the Brotherhood of the Black Pharaoh intending to attempt the resurrection of Nitokris? It would seem that they have the sarcophagus and the circlet and they are still after the girdle. If the necklace in John’s possession is the one required for the resurrection ritual then we can expect the Brotherhood to come looking for it in due course, but it would be useful to know in advance if this is the case. Other lines of enquiry which I believe we should now pursue include a proper search of the Sphinx area after dark, preferably on the dark of the moon, and also a visit to Abaza’s villa.