Tomb Raiders

“What’s this you’re waving in front of me, Abercrombie?”

“It’ a cellphone, Professor!  A cellphone!  I found it on the floor in front of the pharaoh’s sarcophagus by the far wall.”

“Well, whose is it?  Obviously, one of the crew must have dropped it.  That sort of clumsiness cannot be tolerated!  Whoever did it must be cashiered forthwith!”

“Yes, yes, Professor, I agree.  But I’ve checked with everyone.  No one has lost a phone.  Besides, this is an old, flip-top model.  Nobody uses these anymore.”

“Egad, Abercrombie!  Surely you don’t take the scoundrels at their word!  This tomb has been sealed for four thousand years, sacrosanct until we broke through an hour ago.  It’s patently obvious that someone is lying to you.”

The two men were alone in the dank tomb, lit only by a callow light from the low doorway through which they had recently entered.  Everyone else had been sent back outside.

“Professor, it pains me to suggest this, but perchance we are not the first scholarly expedition to have gained access.  It may well be that someone from a rival school has beaten us to the prize.”

“Pshaw, Abercrombie!  The tomb was sealed with the pharaoh’s wax seal.  Not a living soul has been in here since the door was shut forever.”

He looked around as he spoke, suppressing a shudder at the very thought.

“Professor,” Abercrombie said, taking his own glance around, “has it occurred to you that the seal may have been a counterfeit?  And that the tomb is quite barren?  Not at all what we expected, I should say.  No canopic jars, no clothing or jewellery, no desiccated foodstuff.  No oils or ointments, no weapons, no games.  No pets sacrificed to the gods.  Just an unadorned sarcophagus which, as I examine it now, appears to have already been opened.”

“Poppycock!  Balderdash!” the professor exclaimed.  But even he had to admit the tomb was austere.

Abercrombie approached the sarcophagus hesitantly, reached to slide back the cover, then recoiled with a shriek.

“Abercrombie!” the professor shouted.  “My good man, what is it?”

Approaching the exposed coffin, he saw what had startled his assistant—the skeletal remains of a man still partially clothed in a black, linen suit, shredded now with age.  A rictus grin split the skull, leering obscenely at the two men.

Before they could utter another word, the flip-top phone rang in Abercrombie’s hand, so unexpectedly that he almost dropped it.  “Professor?” he whispered, holding the phone out.

“Answer it, man!  Don’t give it to me!”

“Hello” Abercrombie said, his voice quaking with fear.

“Hello, hello!” a voice answered, so loudly that even the professor could hear.  “I see you’ve found my phone!”

“Who…who is this?” Abercrombie managed to say.

“It’s Geraldo Rivera, intrepid broadcaster and journalist here.  I’m outside with my television crew, and we’re coming inside to document your discovery.”

“It’s…it’s not a discovery!” Abercrombie protested.  “It’s a dead body!”

“Yes, yes, I know,” Rivera replied.  “It’s all been arranged.  I’m here to document for a worldwide audience the discovery of the body of…”  His next words were cut off as the ancient phone exhausted its charge.

“Abercrombie, look here!” the professor said, holding up a worn, leather wallet he’d plucked fastidiously from the corpse’s tattered suitcoat.  Opening it delicately, he slid out a document from one of its compartments, laid it carefully on a stone ledge in front of the two men.

“What is it?” Abercrombie asked.

“Why, goodness me, it’s a driver’s permit,” the professor answered.  “No wonder that distasteful Mr. Rivera is here.”

“I don’t understand, Professor.”

“This is no ancient pharaoh, Abercrombie.  You were right in the first instance.  Someone else has been here before us, but it was no scholarly enterprise.”

“Yes, but…but why?” Abercrombie said.

“So that we could appear to be part of Mr. Rivera’s grand scheme to reveal the whereabouts of this body, it would seem,” the professor said.

Before Abercrombie could say another word, the television crew crowded into the tomb, shuffling the professor and his assistant to one side.  Geraldo Rivera, in all his vainglory, his mustachioed smile lighting up the room, strode to the sarcophagus.

“Ladies and gentlemen around the world,” he declared in his most mellifluous tones, “here in front of your eyes, on live television, I unveil for you—just as I promised so many years ago—the earthly remains of none other than James Riddle Hoffa!”

The cellphone dropped unbidden from Abercrombie’s hand.

_{© J. Bradley Burt 2023}