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
