Channeling Cleopatra Read Online Free PDF

Ancient Alexandria in all its glory—a magnificent
tourist attraction, you see. A new ancient tourist attraction people have not grown
accustomed to. This should help bring in the . . ." Agelakos rubbed
thumb and first two fingers together meaningfully. "Money, which
can then be used, as the company hopes, to repay us. Of course, our
corporation also has other more immediate interests in this
project, which it will be your duty to protect."
    Duke nodded.
    Agelakos picked up a stack of DVDs and
signaled for Duke to follow him. He opened the door and gave a
theatrical bow, bending the creases ironed into his uniform sleeves
in the process. The room he'd led Duke to was an office with little
more than a desk containing a computer and a chair. "Please be
seated," the Greek said with a flourish. "These are
English-language newscasts of recent events in Egypt over the last
few years, so that you will understand more about the attitudes of
some of the people you will be working with and some of the
factions who take an unenlightened view of the work you will be
protecting. Please study these carefully, and if you have any
questions, you may click here." He indicated an icon at the bottom
of the screen. "The company expert on Egypt will be available
on-line to answer."
    This seemed to Duke like one of the smartest
things that had been done in this whole Mickey Mouse training
course. Leda knew a lot of stuff about Egypt, but most of it was no
more recent than a couple of thousand years ago, except for all the
scuttlebutt about the archaeologists in the nineteenth century.
    Seemed to Duke, during the history part of
his lesson, as if no conqueror or invader since Julius Caesar had
bothered to kiss poor old Egypt before it screwed her. In fact, the
whole thing had been pretty much of a gang bang after the Romans
left. Everybody had had a piece of the country at one time or
another. Romans, Greeks, Arabs, the French with Napoleon, the
English, the Germans—everybody but Quinn the Eskimo had claimed the
Nile.
    Duke found all of this pretty interesting.
After all, if Nucore had more or less the status of an independent
state within a country, and he was supposed to be part of a force
that represented the customs, immigrations, army, navy, air and
police force, it behooved him to know what he was dealing with.
    And who. There was the current government,
which tended toward fundamentalist Islam, but it was being opposed
on several fronts. There was the CCM, Coptic Christian Movement
(the Coptic Christian Church claimed it had no connections with the
movement), large and predominantly black from the southern part of
Egypt, where people were still angry over the flooding of Nubia by
the Aswan Dam over a century before. And there was a pharonic
wanna-be group of people who thought the ancient Egyptians had the
right idea and wanted to take the country back and run it like King
Tut or someone. Then there were the neighbors—Syria, Libya,
Turkey—all of them promising all kinds of assistance in exchange
for a military toehold in Egypt. So far, the government was smart
enough to see through that one. Then there was the West—Western
Europe and the U.S.—and their economic interests, including
Nucore's. That was pretty complicated.
    Still digesting the information when the
training session was finished, Duke took the lift to the top floor
of the security complex. The main part was inside the crater,
accessed through the ruins of the old Knights Templar citadel.
Someone had a sense of humor. Chimera's villa was down the road
from the mansion and shipping offices where the lab was located. It
was still on the top tier of the wedding cake shape formed by the
volcano cone with its layers of red-roofed white houses. One of the
larger guest houses for the people who lived in the mansion, Duke
supposed, the villa had a private lab for Chimera built into it.
Leda and her old buddy spent a lot of their time holed up down
there, while Chimera showed the