Idaho Mortensen and the Obelisk of Osiris (VM/OB/KU - PG13) Title: Idaho Mortensen and the Obelisk of Osiris Author:nosselinfea Fandom/Pairing: AU Viggo Mortensen/Orlando Bloom/Karl Urban Song Prompt: Walk Like an Egyptian – The Bangles Rating: Probably a PG-13. Slash implied but nothing graphic or explicit. Disclaimer: This is all fiction, nothing is real. I don’t own these men, I only wish I did. Summary: Viggo is an archaeologist on the hunt for a valuable and powerful artifact in Egypt. But others are after the same thing and now it has become a deadly race. Notes: The song I was given inspired me to write something in the vein of Indiana Jones. This is therefore obviously a very AU story. It's also funny, cheesy, and pure 1980s. Thanks to Jack for the beta. 4,200 words.
Cairo, 1938
The city bazaar was hot, dusty, crowded. Market traders loudly proclaimed their wares in competition with the bustle, the braying of donkeys, honking of an occasional car-horn, barking dogs.
One western man pushed through the crowds, a broad-brimmed leather hat pulled down over his brow, protecting his pale skin from the sun's harsh glare. He was in a hurry, ignored the stalls of bright textiles, fruit and aromatic spices and wove between them, holdall clutched tightly in his hand. Across the square he reached his destination, the entranceway of a small but ostentatious colonial hotel, full of polished marble and gleaming treasures of Egypt's past.
Inside the lobby was just as hot as the outside, except for the absence of glaring sunshine. A slowly-rotating ceiling-fan did nothing to cool the stifling air. The westerner took off his hat, wiped his brow with his sleeve, and approached the counter.
"Speak English?" he said, in an American accent, to the fat Egyptian behind it. "Hablo Espanol?"
"English, English," the Egyptian replied.
"I'm Doctor Mortensen. I had a message to meet Professor McKellen here."
"Mortensen?" The Egyptian looked puzzled for a moment. "Aaaah!" he said, a broad smile crossing his face as he rememberd. "Idaho Mortensen! This way, this way!" He got down off his stool and waddled across the lobby, beckoning Mortensen to follow, through a slatted wooden door into an alcove in an opulent lounge that smelled of opium, tobacco and whisky.
Mortensen followed close behind, taking off his hat again as he entered the room. He squinted in the dim light, until his eyes adjusted to the darkness, and approached the table where a familiar figure was seated.
"McKellen," he said with a nod as he said down.
"Viggo, glad you could make it old chap," McKellen said, in his very English accent. "I trust your journey was smooth. Cigar?" He offered a box to Mortensen who took one, and McKellen lit it for him.
"I'm guessing this is about Anoksuten's tomb?" Viggo queried. Of course it would be, if they'd asked for him. He'd worked on nothing else in the past three years.
McKellen confirmed his suspicion with a curt nod. "Indeed it is. Or rather, in an artifact the tomb is rumoured to contain."
"The Obelisk." Again McKellen nodded, and Viggo pulled from his jacket pocket a battered and well-worn leather-bound journal. He thumbed through pages of sketches and closely-written notes, until he came to the page he was looking for. "The obelisk of Osiris," Mortensen said under his breath. The page bore a drawing, across the double spread, of an obelisk; a narrow four-sided pillar, tapering to a point at the top, and decorated on all four sides with heiroglyphs.
McKellen cocked an eyebrow at the drawing. "Of course, no-one has seen the Obelisk in approximately eight thousand years, so no-one knows what it actually looks like…"
"There's enough evidence in the documentation to piece together an approximation," Viggo said. "This sketch is the result of years of study." He narrowed his eyes at the older man. "What's the British interest in this?"
McKellen sat back in his chair, steepling his fingers into a point and resting his chin on them, studying Viggo with his ice-blue eyes. "You will know from your study of course, that the Obelisk is said to be an artifact of great power."
Viggo laughed, and shook his head. "Superstitious nonsense. People have been saying things like this since they opened up King Tut's tomb, and it's all garbage."
"Be that as it may, we know now that others are now interested in the Obelisk. This is no longer a simple archaeology expedition, Doctor Mortensen. It's a race. The British Museum intends to win that race and you are our best hope of doing that."
Viggo gave a cynical half-laugh and waved a waiter to their table. "I'll have a large scotch, the best single malt you have," he said. "He's paying." He waited until the waiter had brought his drink, and sipped it slowly, savouring the heat as it slipped down his throat. "If it's a race," he said, "who am I racing against?"
McKellen frowned. "Germany. Or more specifically, the Schutzstaffel. The SS."
"Nazis? Why are the Nazis interested in ancient egyptian archaeology?"
McKellen shrugged. "Europe hovers on the brink of war, Doctor Mortensen. It is not a case of whether Britain and Germany will go to war, but when. Hitler will take every advantage he can get, and if an obelisk of supposed mystical powers is to be an advantage in the war, it's essential that it's on our side, and not theirs."
Again Viggo laughed but this time he didn’t comment. Most likely there were no mystical powers, but if by some tiny chance there were, and the obelisk could be used as some sort of weapon… He nodded. "Do you have any idea who's heading up the German expedition?"
"Indeed I do," McKellen replied. He pulled a dossier from a leather briefcase, took a photograph from it and passed it across the table. The photograph depicted a man in his early thirties, dark-haired, tight-lipped beneath a heavy moustache. His eyes were dark, penetrating, a look in them that Viggo might have said looked like pure evil. The man wore the uniform of a Nazi SS officer, and the sight made Viggo's blood grow cold, and only one word escaped his lips.
"Karl!"
…………………….
Later that afternoon, in his own hotel room, Viggo lay on his bed studying the dossier that McKellen had given him. Or rather, he ignored the notes (which were sketchy at best) and he just looked at the photograph. It was of a man he knew well, because Karl Urban had once been Viggo Mortensen's brightest and most promising student. But this… this… that uniform, that evil glare in his eyes? He could not believe it. Karl wasn't even fully German; he was a New Zealander by birth. The thought that he had thrown in his lot with the enemy chilled Viggo to the core.
He lay his hands over the top and bottom of the photograph, covering up the SS uniform and hat, squinting sideways at the face between, but still that face wasn't the Karl he remembered. The one he'd loved.
He was disturbed by a knock at the door and before he could answer it, the door was opened and a curly-haired young man came in, a large map draped over his arm, pencil in hand, babbling excitedly about something. Here was his latest protégé; a student perhaps even more brilliant than Karl had been.
Viggo put down the photo and looked up. "Hey, slow down, slow down," he said with a smile, getting up and taking the map from the young man's arms, spreading it out on the table. "What is it, Orlando?"
Orlando babbled some more, jumbled words about vectors and angles of sunrise and stellar progressions, and spread pages of mathematical formula out on top of the map. Thoughts racing, his words could not keep up. Eventually he ran out of breath, and he looked at Viggo with wide, excited brown eyes. "I think I know where the tomb is."
………………………….
At first, Viggo had not believed it. He did not fully comprehend the mathematics, and Orlando'd had to go through his explanation three times before Viggo finally understood, and he just looked at his young student with an expression of sheer astonishment. But mathematics could not be argued with, not even by Viggo, and so he'd eagerly agreed to check out the location. It was, after all, much closer to Cairo than they'd expected. In fact, the location Orlando had calculated placed it very precisely, exactly on the spot where stood the hotel in which they were staying.
As the two archaeologists descended, flashlights in hand, into the basements of the building, another entered the lobby. There were five men, all bearing the black uniform of the SS. One stood above the others; superior in both height and attitude, clearly the senior member of the group to whom the other four deferred. The senior officer turned up his nose as he stepped into the lobby; the hotel was incongrously named "The Grande" when in fact it was shabby and distinctly below the standard to which he was accustomed. He scowled, took a letter from his pocket and double-checked it as though to reassure himself that this was the right place.
It was. How disappointing. "We have reservations," he said to the Egyptian man at the counter. "Three rooms, in the name of Kommandant Urban of the SS." He spoke perfect English, with only a faint trace of German accent.
The Egyptian grunted. He did not much like Westerners, much less ones that marched in bearing firearms and attitudes. He grabbed three keys from the hooks on the wall behind him, and summoned a scrawny, grubby-faced boy barely eight years old to show them the way. The senior officer took the keys and made to follow the boy, but a thought crossed his mind and he turned back to the Egyptian. "You have a Doctor Viggo Mortensen staying here. Please tell him that Karl Urban would like to meet with him at his earliest convenience."
………………………….
Viggo and Orlando were already underground. In the floor of the basement they'd found a grate in the floor which on first inspection appeared to be a manhole leading down into nothing more than a sewer tunnel. It certainly smelled like a sewer tunnel, thought Viggo to himself as he dropped through the hole into ankle-deep silt below.
"Ewww, Idaho," came the plaintive voice from his younger companion, who followed him through the hole. "Are you sure this is the right way?"
"Hey, you're the one who calculated where it was," Viggo replied with a grin. He hated that nickname, but somehow coming from Orlando it sounded different. He shone the torch around the tunnel, and was surprised to find that it wasn't so much a tunnel, as a chamber or room. Viggo took a closer look at the stone blocks from which the walls were constructed. "We must be at the original surface level," he said, his voice hushed. "Look." He pointed out the way the blocks were set together. "Much older than the basement upstairs."
It appeared at first that their journey had come to a dead end, for the chamber seemed to have no entrance or exit except for the hole from the basement by which they'd arrived. They decided to search two walls each, Viggo going clockwise and Orlando anti-clockwise around the chamber, though what they were searching for, neither of them knew for sure.
It was Orlando who found something first. "Hey, Idaho. What's this?" His flashlight was focussed on something on the wall, a little below eyelevel. Viggo crossed the room to look and he let out a low whistle. Orlando had found a cartouche; a carving of heiroglyphic symbols enclosed in an oval shape which signified a name of some inportance. The carving was worn almost to nothing, but with the flashlight held at a certain angle, Viggo could just make out three heiroglyphs; a pyramid, a spider, and an ibis. The symbols of the pharoah Anoksuten.
Viggo pulled a knife from inside his boot, and started tapping the wall with the flat of the blade, first on one side of the cartouche, then the other. On the left it made only a dull thudding sound. On the right though, the sound resonated and almost seemed to fill the chamber with its echo. "Hollow," he whispered. He started to chip away at the mortar between the stones, but it was slow-going. Orlando ran back to the hotel room for more tools, and when he came back with a shovel, hammer and chisels, his face was as white as a sheet.
"Nazis!" he hissed. "There are Nazis here!"
"Then we're running out of time. Hurry!"
Even with that urgency, it took the best part of two hours to chip away at enough of the wall to make a hole large enough to crawl through. Thankfully both archaeologists were fairly lightly built, though it was still a tight squeeze through the wall into the passage beyond.
The tunnel was dry, having been sealed from the chamber for so long, but still there was a current of almost fresh air from somewhere, as if the passage was ventilated from above. The passage was about six feet high, barely two feet wide, and sloped steeply downhill. How long it was, they could not tell, their flashlights penetrated only a few yards into the total blackness, with no sign of an end to the passage.
What they did find though, were spiders' webs. At first they had been quite alarming but they soon got to be a major annoyance, clinging to their faces, sticking in their hair. Viggo took off his hat and waved it in front of him as he proceeded downwards, pulling down as many of the webs as he could. Orlando simply walked close behind, using Viggo's body as a shield, and occasionally muttering "ugh, yuck," as a web Viggo had missed caught him squarely in the face. The walls were pitted with cracks and holes and spiders scuttled into them, seeking shelter from the sudden disturbance of unexpected light and noise.
"Good thing Karl isn't here," Viggo chuckled. "He hates spiders."
The passage doubled back on itself several times, though always descending at the same rate. Orlando glanced at his wristwatch, and calculated from the time they'd been walking, and the angle of descent, that they were now at least 250 feet, perhaps more, underground. Here the passage levelled off and broadened into a much bigger tunnel, almost a chamber. Their flashlights revealed walls decorated with heiroglyphs and murals, their original bright colours and gold leaf intact and untouched, unseen, since the tomb was originally sealed.
Viggo let out another whistle as he looked at the murals. Orlando's eyes were wide with astonishment; he'd never in his life seen anything quite as magnificent. This was indeed the burial chamber of a king. He stopped to look at one part of the mural, blinked, took a closer look, and coughed, blushing brightly. Maybe he would ask Doctor Mortensen about the murals later.
By this time Viggo was paying closer attention to the end wall of the passage. Here, he expected to find the entranceway to the tomb itself, but clearly it had been securely sealed at the time of the original burial. The wall could be several feet thick here, there was no way they'd be able to break their way through this one armed only with chisels and knives. These stones fit together perfectly even without mortar, they'd need a bulldozer to get through.
Orlando slumped against the wall. "So close. We're not going to get inside are we?"
But Viggo wasn't listening. He was reading the heiroglyphs, muttering something to himself.
"What does it say?"
"hmmm… something about a curse, I think." He followed some glyphs with his finger. "Here find the resting place of the pharoah Anoksuten, lord of the Nile, Master of sun and moon and stars… gee, modest guy huh? …defended and protected… weaver mistresses of night and heaven… death everlasting to any who disturb his rest."
Orlando bit his lip. "I think we should go back."
"No, wait, I think I've…" Viggo's voice trailed in concentration as his finger, which was tracing the heiroglyphs, suddenly found what appeared to be a narrow hole drilled into the stone. It was just the right size to accommodate an adult's index finger, but he wasn't about to take any chances. Instead he took one of the chisels and poked it into the hole. There was a sudden movement, and something emerged from it; a black spider, which scuttled down the wall and disappeared into a shadowy corner. He poked again, this time found the end of the hole. Something clicked. There was a distant rumbling and whirring sound from behind the wall, and slowly a section of it started to swing open, like a door.
"…found something."
The rumbling and grinding of the door had masked the sound of approaching footsteps, so the booming voice from behind them took them both completely by surprise.
"Indeed you have, Idaho Mortensen. The Fuehrer will be most grateful."
………………………….
The burial chamber was vast, and it was only when braziers were filled with oil and lit that its true splendor could be seen. The walls themselves were decorated with murals, vividly painted and richly decorated with gold. There were piles of treasures everywhere: statues, urns, chests containing who knows what riches. Centerpiece in the chamber was a sarcophagus made of stone, five feet high and eight long. On the lid a carved effigy of a Pharoah in repose, in ceremonial regalia again brightly painted and decorated in gold. Spiders' webs were everywhere, undisturbed by human hand for eight thousand years.
Unfortunately for both Viggo and Orlando, neither of them were in a position to examine the treasures. It had taken barely twenty seconds for Urban's SS soldiers to tie them both up, each with their backs against a heavy stone throne on which the Pharoah Anoksuten himself must have sat.
"Now what?" Orlando hissed at Viggo over his shoulder.
Viggo grunted, trying in vain to free his hands from the ropes. "How the hell do I know?" he muttered back.
Meanwhile the Nazi soldiers were busy packing the treasures into crates, Urban overseeing the activity and issuing orders in German. Viggo didn't understand the words but he could see anxiety in Karl's expression as the other soldiers boxed the treasures and started to carry them back to the surface.
"Why, Karl?" Viggo asked.
Karl turned to face Viggo, one eyebrow arched, a smile on his face. "Why? Just look around you! Such magnificence! Such history! You cannot imagine how much these treasures are worth." He looked around the chamber, his eyes fell on the effigy laid on the Sarcophagus, and he drew a breath. "The Obelisk!"
And there it was. Overlooked before, because it was smaller than any of them had expected. Not a pillar towering several feet from the ground, the Obelisk of Osiris turned out to be no more than twelve inches high, carved of a rich salmon-coloured marble, and was tightly clutched in the effigy's right hand.
Carefully, Karl prised the marble obelisk out of the grasp of the stone Pharoah. As he did so, a spider scuttled out of a crack in the stone, and Karl flinched away, dropping the obelisk in surprise. Quickly he composed himself, stamped on the spider with his heavy boot, and picked up the Obelisk again to admire it once more.
Viggo and Orlando looked over their shoulders at each other. Orlando was smiling. "There are cracks in the walls too," he whispered. "Did you notice?"
Viggo squinted through the darkness at the walls. Orlando was right. There were cracks and holes, just like the ones they'd seen in the passage earlier. He redoubled his efforts to free his hands from the ropes, and although he could not release them completely, he found he had just enough movement now to grab hold of the whip he wore on his belt.
He'd become an expert in wielding a whip back in his days on the horse-ranch in Idaho, and since then he'd always favoured it as a weapon. A whip could be useful in ways a gun or knife could never be.
Viggo kept Urban talking, as a distraction, while he loosened and freed the whip from his belt. "But why, Karl? Why betray your homeland and side with the Nazis? You're a New Zealander for Chrissakes."
"How else could I have got the finance for an expedition like this? You have the British Museum paying your way, the Fuehrer pays mine." Karl smiled. "We both want the same thing, Viggo."
Viggo narrowed his eyes at Karl. "I assure you, we don't."
"No?" Karl strode over to where Viggo and Orlando were sitting. He leaned over Viggo, and lifted the obelisk. For a moment Viggo thought Karl was going to strike him with the marble artifact but instead he brushed it slowly down Viggo's cheek, and across his lips. Viggo closed his eyes, shivered. His right hand closed around the handle of the whip. Now was the perfect moment, if only he could move…
But Karl backed away, out of range even of the whip, and the moment was gone. As though awakened from a dream, Viggo opened his eyes to find Orlando hissing angrily at him. "You idiot! You could've had him then!"
With a set of his jaw, Viggo quickly glanced around the room and his plan was made. The length of his whip wouldn’t reach Karl but it would reach the nearest brazier. Maybe he could topple it over his former student. With a flick of his wrist he cast the whip towards the legs of the brazier. The lash twisted around the leg, Viggo tugged, and the brazier began to topple…
…the wrong way.
Burning oil spilled as the brazier fell, but instead of spilling towards Karl, it spilled harmlessly up the wall, where there was nothing flammable, serving only to scorch the mural-painting. Karl scowled at Viggo. "Idiot," he said, marching over to him again and snatching the whip out of his hand. A mischievous smirk formed on his face. "A whip, eh? Bet you have some fun with this."
Viggo sneered back. "Oh, you have NO idea…"
At that moment another movement caught his eye. The flames from the burning oil had all but gone out now, but the painting seemed to be moving. Viggo blinked, thinking that maybe the lack of air down here was making him hallucinate. Then he realised what was happening. The painting wasn't moving but something was.
Weaver mistresses of night and heaven...
The cracks in and behind the wall must have been full of the creatures, and the sudden heat and light from the burning oil had disturbed their peaceful slumber. Now they emerged from the cracks; swarms of them, like a rippling black blanket.
Karl went white, and backed up against the far wall as the swarm spread out across the floor. "Spiders…" he said, his voice now tiny and childlike. "Spiders…"
………………………….
The steam-boat from Cairo to New Zealand was slow, but that suited the archaeologists just fine. A deal had been settled in the Tomb of Anoksuten, that involved the equal sharing of the treasures from the tomb between the British Museum and the Nazi party. The sarcophagus, presumably containing the remains of the Pharoah Anoksuten himself, was granted to the British share of the treasures, which Karl agreed to only when Orlando threatened to stuff an extra handful of spiders down his stiff Nazi shirt.
As for the obelisk itself, well, both the Fuehrer and McKellen were told that it had not been found, and was probably just a myth after all.
The pillar of pink marble sat proudly on the shelf above the bed in which the three archaeologists lay. Not a single stiff Nazi shirt to be seen; Urban had tossed his SS uniform into the Red Sea as the ship steamed away from Egypt. Since then the three of them had barely left the cabin, or even the bed, and Viggo had shown both Orlando and Karl just what fun could be had with a whip.
"I still don’t get it," Orlando said, as the three of them relaxed after yet another session of heated lovemaking.
Viggo, who lay in the middle, one arm around each of his companions, smiled and kissed his cheek. "What don’t you understand, sweetie?"
"Well, does the Obelisk have any special magical powers or not?"
Viggo chuckled. "Of course it does. The Ancient Egyptians were powerful magicians. All those stories about curses and things…"
"All true," interrupted Karl, who lay on Viggo's other side.
"So, why didn’t you hand it over to the British Museum, if it'll help in the war?" Orlando asked.
"Hey, what about the Germans?" Karl protested, but light-heartedly, reaching over to give Orlando a playful poke.
"How could I make a choice like that? Suppose the powers of the Obelisk really do help the war, then whoever we give it to, would win." Viggo smiled and traced a finger down Orlando's pretty nose. "No. I say, we let them fight it out on their own. Besides…"
Karl chuckled. "Besides, it's not the sort of power that would really help, in a war."
Orlando frowned at Karl. "Why?"
"Well, did you realise that the Obelisk of Osiris is actually a fertility symbol? Phallic."
"What do you mean?"
In reply Karl grinned, grabbed the obelisk off the shelf and held it erect over his crotch, making some fairly obscene motions of his right hand around it. "See?" he said, winking at Orlando.
"Ohhh…" Orlando blushed, then grinned back. "I suppose that explains why there were so many spiders. With the obelisk affecting their virility, they'd be doing nothing but having sex all day."
"Speaking of having sex all day…" Viggo looked at his two companions and licked his lips. "I believe it's Orlando's turn to play with the whip…"