The figure drew up to the main door of the archaeology lab. It was locked, but the figure had long before procured a skeleton key and opened the door with silent fingers. It glanced down the hallway again, paused a moment to listen, then slipped inside and closed the door quietly behind.
Without turning on the lights, it slipped through the rooms full of lab tables, artifact lockers, and preservation and curatorial equipment, until it reached the storage facility at the rear of the laboratory. The figure opened the heavy door and stepped into the chill interior. Only now did it switch on a small flashlight. The beam licked over the surfaces of the small room, coming to rest at last on a wall containing a half-dozen large drawers, like the corpse lockers of a morgue.
More quickly now, the figure came forward, slid the fingers of one hand down the drawers, then seized the handle of one and—as quietly as possible—drew it out. The smell of the room, dust and mold and chemicals and the faint rot of the swamp outside—became freighted with another smell: the smell of death.
Inside the locker lay the mummy of King Narmer.
The figure drew the locker out to its full length. It shone the flashlight beam over the pharaoh’s corpse. It was remarkably well preserved for its five-thousand-year entombment. Remarkable, too, how the mummy had been wrapped, or—indeed—that it had been wrapped at all: such a mummy would not be seen again until perhaps the New Kingdom, a millennium and a half later. Amazing, how much had been forgotten—and relearned, much later—more than a thousand years after Narmer’s death. Was this in part because of the pains the pharaoh had taken to delude all by creating a false tomb; by having his corpse buried at such a distance from his own lands?
At the moment, however, the figure was not interested in theoretical questions. It was interested in the mummy’s bandages—and what they contained.
The mummy’s body cloth had been removed and the linen wrappings were now exposed, glistening faintly with ancient unguent. The figure reached into the pockets of the lab coat and removed several evidence bags and a heavy scalpel. Working quickly, it cut away the bands that fixed the papyrus scroll—with its spells for a safe passage through the underworld—from the mummy’s hands and placed the papyrus aside. It then cut the black scarab lying on the mummy’s chest—placed over the heart and inscribed with its own magical spells—away from its golden necklace and placed both necklace and scarab into one of the evidence bags. Next, the figure began removing the individual strips of linen wrapped around the mummy’s fingers. As it did so, artifacts began coming to light: golden rings, gems, and beads, all winking dully in the gleam of the flashlight.
The figure laughed delightedly under its breath at these finds and quickly slipped them into the evidence bag.
Now it moved toward the mummy’s head and—working even more quickly—freed the outermost bandage from its resin bonds and began unwrapping it. More items appeared: a falcon collar fashioned out of gold, another of faience. These, like everything else secreted within the mummy’s bandages, were meant as magical protections to help speed the king from this world to the next. Tearing them roughly away from the bandages, the figure placed them in the evidence bag. After all these years, they were still thickly smeared with unguent—a different type of unguent, it seemed, than that which protected the mummy’s outer wraps. No doubt some primitive preservative, lacking the refined preparation of later dynasties.
The figure continued unwrapping the head bandages. More objects appeared: a resin scarab, a beautiful diadem inlaid with gems. Both went into the bag.
The first evidence bag was full now, and the figure sealed it and placed it back into the pocket of the lab coat. Time was critical, and the intruder dared not dally much longer. Already it had harvested a dozen items from within the mummy’s wrappings—a dozen more and it would leave.
It moved back down to the mummy’s chest. A painting of Osiris had still been faintly visible on the body cloth—given such a wildly anachronistic find, was it possible the pharaoh’s crook and flail might also lie buried beneath the layers of linen? If so, it would be a princely discovery indeed.
The intruder picked up the scalpel—fingers now sticky with unguent, its movements feeling a little heavy and slow—and, no longer showing the least reverence for the long-departed king, sliced deeply into the wrappings that covered the chest. The smell of death grew stronger. Immediately, twinklings of gold peeped out through the cut layers of bandages. The figure identified a dagger, a golden chain, several protective amulets of the most ornate design. And—what was that, barely visible beneath the lowest layers of bandages? Was it possible, remotely possible, it was a large, golden ba-bird, its wings studded with countless gemstones …?
Working feverishly now, the figure dug into the bandages, feeling around, plucking out the amulets one after another and depositing them in the second bag. These, too, were thickly smeared with a primitive unguent, the color of earth—disgusting, but there would be plenty of time to clean up later.
The figure wiped its hands together, wiped the stickiness off onto its lab coat. Then, picking up the scalpel again, it bent over the mummy, preparing to slice away the final bandages.
But wait … something was wrong. What was this strange sensation of prickly heat that seemed to rise from within? What was this horrible smell—of sulfur, or something worse, that grew and grew until it filled the entire room?
The figure stepped back in alarm. But even as it did so, the feeling of heat turned to one of flame, of roiling smoke. The figure opened its mouth to gasp—but the gasp turned into an escalating shriek, rising in pitch and volume, as the pain quickly spread, wrapping the tomb robber in a vise of intolerable pain.
45
This time, when Jeremy Logan descended to the air lock platform at the bottom of the Umbilicus, it was so crowded there was almost no room for him to stand. He counted ten others, including Tina Romero, Ethan Rush, Stone, Valentino—in person, for a change—two of March’s archaeologists, two roustabouts, and two security guards. He nodded at the assembled group. Several—Rush, Stone, the archaeologists—looked rather drawn and ashen. The mood was serious, tense, with little of the fraught anticipation he’d noticed during his first descent to the tomb.
Logan understood why Rush would look upset—Jennifer was still comatose, having slipped into some kind of hypnotic trance from which she could not be immediately wakened—but not the others.
“Where’s Dr. March?” he asked, looking around. Nobody answered.
“Are we ready?” Stone asked after another minute. There was a scattering of nods, murmured assents.
“Then let’s get started.” As he spoke, Stone took Logan by the arm and went on ahead of the others, moving into chamber one. When they were several steps inside, he leaned in close to Logan. “March is dead,” he muttered.
Logan looked at him, shocked. “Dead?”
Stone nodded. His lips were pressed together so tightly they were barely visible. “He snuck into the archaeology lab late last night and violated Narmer’s mummy. Unwrapped the bandages, started looting the corpse of the treasures bound into its windings. There was a small explosion, a fire …”
“An explosion?” Logan repeated.
“Two different chemicals were secreted in the strata of Narmer’s bandages. I’ve been informed that, separately, they are inert, but when mixed together—well, they act like an ancient version of napalm.”
“You mean, a booby trap? What kind of chemicals? How could it still be effective after all these centuries?”
“My people are still analyzing things, but clearly the compounds were highly stable. Some kind of potassium derivative, it seems, with a primitive form of glycerol or glycol as the antagonist.” Stone glanced back at the others, who were approaching. “Look, Jeremy—only a few know about this. We’re keeping it quiet, for reasons of morale, and … other things.”
“Any idea what his motive was?” Logan asked. “Surely it wasn’t simple venality.”
“It’s too early to tell. But it just might be as depressingly simple as that. I’ve started conducting some inquiries back in the States. It seems March had run up staggering debts over the last year, living far beyond his means. He might have been in the employ of one of my rivals, trying to spook our workers, faking up elements of the curse. Or maybe he was just hoping to line his pockets with as much gold and jewels as possible.” He sighed. “I should have had him vetted again, like everybody else. But I’d worked with him so often before. I trusted him.”
Logan nodded toward the tomb that stretched ahead of them. “Are you sure you don’t want to postpone this?”
Another, brusquer shake of the head. “We can’t. With the dam so far ahead of schedule, we can expect an official delegation to visit any day now to discuss the termination of our stay here—and we’re too advanced in our work for any more dissembling. We have to remove what grave goods we can and leave before it’s too late.”
Remove what grave goods we can. Logan glanced in the direction of Tina Romero. It seemed that, even from beyond the grave, March’s acquisitiveness had rubbed off on Stone. Logan wondered what the Egyptologist would think of this.
As the others assembled around them, Logan glanced over chamber one. His eyes stopped at the heavy, ornamental bed, now in ruins, its canopy collapsed onto the sleeping platform. There were still a few dried bloodstains marking the spot where the luckless Robert Carmody had met his end. The heavy gold bolts holding the canopy in place had been deliberately loosened—had that been March’s handiwork, too—prepping them for later removal?
The hand that touches my immortal form will burn with unquenchable fire—Narmer’s words, once again. And, once again, the curse seemed to be coming true. Ironic, he thought—if March had been giving Narmer’s curse a boost of his own here and there, it had ultimately played out in a way the archaeologist would never, ever have desired.
Silently, the group made their way toward the opened gate in the rear that led to the next chamber. Chamber two was also almost completely empty; the only things remaining were the two shrines, physically built into the structure of the chamber, and the immense blue granite sarcophagus at the center. Logan glanced again at Tina Romero. Her expression was set, unreadable.
Rush came up and Logan turned to him. “How’s Jennifer?”
The doctor looked as if he hadn’t slept in a long time. “We’ve moved her to the medical suite. Her vitals are strong, and she’s stable. I’m uncertain why she hasn’t regained consciousness.”
“Do you think it could be a reaction to the stress of that last crossing? Some kind of hysteric catatonia?”
“I sincerely doubt it. She’s never shown any indications of that before.”
Logan looked around. “I assume it was you who pronounced March—right?”
Rush’s bleak look grew bleaker still. “My God. What a thing.”
Stone had moved ahead to the golden wall at the rear of chamber two. It looked the same as the other three walls, save the large seals placed along one edge and the design embossed in the gold. As Logan drew closer, he was able to make out the image: a huge, leering face that—disconcertingly, unlike the normal profiles seen in Egyptian art—was staring directly at them, seemingly half jackal, half human. The rest of the wall, Logan now noticed, was covered with very faint hieroglyphics, beautifully and cunningly embossed in the precious metal.
“Tina?” Stone murmured. “Can you make out the message in those glyphs?”
Romero drew closer. “It’s the final part of the curse, repeated over and over,” she said after a brief examination. “ ‘Should any in their temerity pass the third gate, then the black god of the deepest pit will seize him, and his limbs will be scattered to the uttermost corners of the earth. And I, Narmer the Everliving, will torment him and his, by day and by night, waking and sleeping, until madness and death become his eternal temple.’ ”
A brief silence settled over the collective company.
“And that image?” Stone asked. “That god-face?”
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Romero answered.
“What about the seals?”
“Royal seals. Like the others we’ve seen, only much larger and more ornate. Serekhs, with echoes of the curse woven in among the primitive symbols for the pharaoh’s name.”
Super seals, Logan thought to himself.
“The ground-penetrating radar readings for the room beyond were anomalous,” Stone said. “According to the scans, it’s as if there’s nothing in there—which, of course, can’t be right.” He stared at the wall for a moment, lost in thought. Then he recovered himself. “All right,” he said, turning to Rush. “Go ahead, Ethan.”
The group waited in silence as the doctor drilled a test hole in the gold, inserted his instruments, sampled the air beyond, and pronounced it safe. Then Stone himself stepped up to the seals, and—with Romero standing by with an artifact storage container—carefully cut through first the upper necropolis seal and then the lower, more ornate royal seal. As he carefully pried them away from the gold sheeting, there was a loud click, followed by a sighing, grinding sound, and to Logan’s surprise the entire rear wall pivoted inward about two feet, like a door moving on hinges. The group stepped back in unison, and there were gasps of consternation. But when nothing else occurred, Stone stepped forward once again—a little gingerly—and shone his light into the blackness of chamber three. After a moment, he glanced back at the roustabouts.
“Stabilize this entrance,” he told them. “Then we’re going in.”
46
Once again, Stone went in first, barely waiting for the roustabouts to complete testing the integrity of the entranceway. His movements were quick, even brusque, as if the recent troubles—and the ticking clock—had given him an unseemly sense of haste. He ducked past the workers and through the narrow opening, disappearing beyond the wall of the third gate. For a moment, all was silent; the only indication anyone was in chamber three was the reflected glow of Stone’s flashlight, lancing here and there through the darkness. Then Logan heard Stone clear his throat.
“Tina? Ethan? Dr. Logan? Valentino?” he called in a strange voice. “Please come in.”
Logan followed the others through the gap in the wall and into the final chamber. At first, he thought his flashlight was malfunctioning—it didn’t seem to provide any illumination. And then he realized: the entire chamber was clad in what appeared to be onyx, walls and floor and ceiling, black and unreflective. The stone seemed to soak up their flashlight beams, pulling the light from them and leaving the small chamber so dim that its contents could barely be made out.
“Jesus,” Tina said, shivering. “How creepy.”
“Is that your professional opinion, Tina?” Stone asked.
“Kowinsky,” Valentino called out through the gap in the third gate. “Bring up one of those sodium vapor lamps.”
For a moment, everyone fell quiet, examining the chamber. To Logan, it did seem remarkably bare, compared to the opulent rooms that had come before. There was a single ornamental table placed along the left wall, enameled in gold, containing a dozen papyri, each carefully rolled and set in a line. In the rear of the chamber was what looked like a small bed, quite narrow, that had once been covered by some kind of linen coverlet and a pillow, both now sadly decomposed. Across from the table, placed along the floor by the opposing wall, were three small boxes—apparently of solid gold—along with a single urn.
But everyone’s attention quickly turned to the artifact sitting in the center of the room. It was a large chest, about four feet square, fashioned of some black stone—perhaps onyx again—and set upon a fantastically carved plinth of dark, dense wood. Its edges were lined in strips of gold. On its sides were reproductions of several of the designs they had already seen in chamber one—the box-shaped artifact topped by an iron rod; the bowl-like object trailing wisps of gold from its edges. But this time, the images were fashioned out of a multitude of
brilliantly colored gemstones, set into the surface of the chest. Across its top was an elaborately fashioned serekh.
“Tina?” Stone said, pointing at the serekh, his voice almost a whisper. “That’s the rebus for Narmer’s name. Right?”
Tina nodded slowly. “Yes. I think so.”
Stone turned to her. “You think so?”
She had set down her video camera, the room being too dark to film, and was peering more closely at the chest. “The glyphs match, all right. But these scratches, here, through the head of the catfish … I don’t know. It’s most unusual. But it’s all unusual. That cotlike structure in the rear, the shrines in chamber two, the strange emptiness of this room …” She paused again. “It’s like I said once before. It’s almost as if this entire tomb was used as a rehearsal for Narmer’s death, for his passage to the next world, the Field of Offerings.”
“Have you come across anything like this before?” Stone asked.
“No.” She looked around the dim space for a minute, brow furrowed in confusion. “It’s almost as if … but, no, it couldn’t be.” She peered again at the chest. “If only I could get a better look at this.”
“Kowinsky!” Valentino bawled. “What’s up with those lights?”
“Not enough room to get them through this opening, sir,” came the disembodied voice of Kowinsky.
“You might want to take a look at those papyri,” Stone said to Tina. “Maybe they can shed some light on things.”
She nodded, moved away with her light.
Now Stone, followed by Dr. Rush, moved over to the series of small golden boxes set along the right-hand wall. Stone crouched down and began to carefully remove the top of the first with latex-gloved hands.
Logan watched, hugging himself against the chill and a feeling of growing dismay. Ever since entering the chamber, he had been aware of the malignant presence. It sensed them—he was sure of that—but the overpowering evil he had felt several times before was being held in check for the time being. It was almost as if it was watching, waiting … and biding its time. He reached into his duffel, pulled out the air ion counter, and swept it slowly around. The air in here was significantly more ionized than normal—in fact, the air had grown increasingly ionized as they’d penetrated deeper into the tomb. What this meant he wasn’t certain.