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awkwardly down the cascade of rock fragments that filled the tunnel entrance. He began to cough violently and quickly replaced the dust mask where it had been wrenched off. He grimaced, pulled his legs through, then crouched upright in the narrow tunnel.
    ‘Sorry.’ Maria’s face appeared through the hole, capped with a yellow hard hat and wearing protective glasses and a dust mask, her long dark hair tied back. Her voice was strong and mellifluous, English with a hint of a Spanish accent. ‘Always best to catch people unawares, I find. If you tense up it’s hopeless.’
    ‘You’ve done that often?’
    ‘I’ve been through a few holes in my time.’ She slipped effortlessly through and crouched beside him, their two bodies exactly filling the width of the tunnel with scarcely enough headroom to stand upright. ‘I hope you’re still intact. A few bruises seemed better than another sentence to the superintendency office, begging for a pneumatic drill.’
    ‘My thoughts precisely.’ Hiebermeyer rubbed his left leg gingerly. ‘The permit only allows us to follow this old tunnel, not to dig new ones. Even widening that hole created by the earthquake would be a criminal transgression. It’s madness.’ He peered back through the dust. ‘Not that the superintendency people will notice what we do right now.’
    ‘They’ll be catching up to us soon.’
    Hiebermeyer grunted, then raised his safety glasses and eyed Maria thoughtfully as he cleaned the lenses. ‘Anyway, I rather enjoyed our time together in the office. A crash course on medieval manuscripts from a world expert. Fascinating. And I was about to read you my doctoral thesis on the Roman quarries opened up by the emperor Claudius in Egypt.’
    Maria groaned. ‘You’re supposed to be in your element here, Maurice. Underground, I mean. Remember, I was on board Seaquest II when Jack took the call, after the earthquake here. Get an Egyptologist, he said. Someone used to catacombs, burrowing in the ground, the Valley of the Kings and all that.’
    ‘Ah, the Valley of the Kings,’ Hiebermeyer sighed. He watched as Maria backed up until her head was inches from the snout of the jackal. ‘But you’re right. I am in my element now. It’s fabulous. We have a new friend.’
    ‘Huh?’
    ‘Turn around. Slowly.’
    Maria did as instructed, then yelped and threw herself back. ‘ Dios mia . Oh my God.’
    ‘Don’t worry. It’s just a statue.’
    Maria was splayed against the tunnel entrance, but far enough back to take in everything that had been revealed. ‘It’s a dog,’ she whispered. ‘A wolf. On a human torso.’
    ‘Relax. It won’t bite.’
    ‘Sorry. My nerves are a little frayed.’ Maria took a deep breath, then leaned forward and peered closely. ‘It’s not possible,’ she murmured. ‘Hieroglyphs? Is this thing Egyptian?’
    ‘Anubis,’ Hiebermeyer said matter-of-factly. ‘A life-sized statue of the Egyptian god of the dead, in black steatite. The hieroglyphs are a copy of the Instructions for Merikare , a text of the third millennium BC, but that cartouche at the bottom is a royal inscription of the Twenty-Sixth Dynasty, of the Sixth century BC. I wouldn’t be surprised if this came from the royal capital at Saïs, on the Nile delta.’
    ‘That rings a bell,’ Maria said. ‘Wasn’t that where the Athenian Solon visited the high priest? Where he recorded the legend of Atlantis?’
    ‘You’ve spent some time with Jack.’
    ‘I’m an adjunct professor of the International Maritime University now, remember? Just like you. It’s like we’re all back at college again. He told me the whole story on board Seaquest II on our voyage back from the Yucatán. I was completely hooked. It really helped to refocus me.’
    Hiebermeyer peered back at her through the dust. ‘I know this may seem an odd time to say it, but I do know what you went through. In the Yucatán, I mean, the kidnapping and torture, your friend O’Connor in Scotland.