straw, that broke the camel’s back.
She swung a UV light into place over the mummy. It might be callous to think so, but a part of her was relieved March was out of the way. He had always been a tyrannical presence in the archaeology labs, micromanaging everything and everybody, insisting things be done his way, blustering and bullying and complaining. This was the second time Amanda Richards had worked with him, and he’d been much worse this time out. Perhaps it was all of a piece with whatever mind-set had prompted him to loot the mummy. She shrugged. All she knew for sure was that-had he lived, had somebody else been the one to violate Narmer’s corpse-March would have been looking over her shoulder right now, scowling, second-guessing her every move and telling her how she was doing it all wrong.
As it was, the forensic archaeology lab was delightfully calm and silent.
She moved the UV light slowly over the mummy. Remains of mummy varnish fluoresced a pale gold under the light. Dark patches, where the technicians had stabilized the sticky glycerol with an inert compound to render it harmless, were scattered here and there throughout the upper layers of bandages, torn open by March in his feverish search for grave goods.
Richards snapped off the light and put it aside. Narmer’s chest was the most badly damaged area-she would begin her restoration work there.
Wheeling over a powerful surgical lamp, she aimed it at the chest and began examining the damage with a jeweler’s loupe. March had sliced right through the bandages, exposing numerous layers after the fashion of geologic strata. The anepigraphic scarab had been removed by March, but numerous other, smaller treasures peeped out from the layers of wrappings: beads and faience amulets and golden trinkets and the other items forming the “magic armor” that served to protect Narmer in his journey to the next world.
She shook her head, tut-tutting under her breath. March had made such a hash of the bandages covering Narmer’s chest that she would have to unwrap still more of them before she could even think of putting them back into any sort of order.
Using the forceps, she carefully pulled back the edges of the disturbed wrappings, exposing the deeper layers, tangled and somewhat shredded from the effects of Narmer’s booby trap. Putting aside the forceps and taking up the scalpel, she cut away first one, then a second wrapping, freeing them from the tangle and pulling them away. She hated to do it, but there was no other way to restore the damage. Narmer’s body had been so carefully wrapped, and March had been so hasty and reckless in tearing at those wrappings, that it was like trying to realign the rubber bands around the core of a golf ball.
Taking a fresh grip on the scalpel, she sliced through yet another layer of the linen bandages. Now Narmer’s actual flesh was exposed to the light, covered by a thin cloth and a golden chest piece, which itself had become dislodged, probably by the chemical reaction. That was not good-it might be pressing improperly against the flesh, perhaps damaging it further. She would need to reseat it upon Narmer’s chest. Then she could begin the work of sewing back the layers of bandages with linen thread, and-in places where the original wrappings had decayed or become too brittle-replacing them with her supply of ancient flax wrappings. Then she could move on to the head and the hands, where the work should go much faster. In three hours-four at the most-Narmer’s mummy would again be whole and stabilized for transfer to England.
Putting down the scalpel, she very carefully reached through the layers of cut bandages and gently grasped the edges of the golden chest piece. The surrounding tissue, she noted with approval, was in excellent condition given its great age: gray and desiccated, with no sign of deliquescence. The chest piece, however, was difficult to budge, and she was forced to apply additional pressure. Finally, it shifted, coming free of Narmer’s body with a dry snick.
Richards lifted it slightly, preparing to reseat it properly and sew the bandages over it. But then she stopped abruptly, rooted in place by surprise and shock.
With the chest piece freed from its original position, the flesh of Narmer’s chest was laid bare. And as Richards looked down at the body, she saw-in the pitiless fluorescent light of the laboratory-a wrinkled, shrunken, desiccated, and yet unmistakable female breast.
48
As the rest of the group watched in rapt silence, Stone stepped up to the large onyx chest. Valentino’s roustabouts came up to stand on either side of him. Stone hesitated briefly, then knelt before the plinth and let one latex-gloved hand brush gently across the upper surface of the chest. His shoulders trembled visibly. He pulled the gloves from his hands-Rush, Logan noted, made no protest at this-and caressed the chest once again. Despite what he’d implied about the chest holding the answer to all Narmer’s secrets, Stone seemed to be in no hurry to open it.
Standing back in the darkness, watching, Logan understood. He remembered the speech Stone had given to the assembled troops, describing his first archaeological discovery: the Native American settlement everyone else had missed. He remembered the gleam in Stone’s eye when he’d first met him, disguised as an elderly local researcher, that day in the Cairo museum when he’d said: work quickly. Over his illustrious career, Stone had uncovered almost incontrovertible evidence of the existence of Camelot. He’d recovered traces of Hippolyta, queen of the Amazons, whom historians had always consigned to myth. And yet in discovering the tomb of Narmer, he had outdone even himself. Logan knew that Stone held Flinders Petrie, father of modern archaeology, with a respect that bordered on reverence. And yet now Stone had accomplished what had eluded even Petrie. With the discovery of Narmer’s crown, he would take his place in the highest circle of his profession-a circle reserved for one. His detractors would be forever silenced. Stone would become, for all time, the world’s greatest archaeologist.
Silently, Stone ran his hands around the top of the chest, then along its sides, his spidery fingers moving this way and that, almost like a phrenologist analyzing a skull. “Tina,” he said at last, his voice breaking the silence, “a scalpel, please.”
Tina moved forward and handed Stone the thin, straight blade. He nodded his thanks, then gently applied the scalpel to the strips of gold that lined the chest. Logan had assumed these strips to be mere inlaid decoration; instead, they appeared to be bands of precious metal holding the chest closed by ritual seals. Having cut through them, Stone peeled the bands away from the chest, then laid them carefully aside. A single band of gold remained, holding the elaborately bejeweled serekh in place on the chest’s upper surface; another careful notch of the scalpel cut through this as well, and Stone gently placed both it and its attached serekh by the base of the plinth. Then he rose and nodded to the roustabouts. The two positioned themselves on each side of the chest. At Stone’s direction, each grasped an edge of the lid and began to lift it. Although the lid could not have been more than two inches thick, the roustabouts could barely budge it from its position; Valentino and one of the security guards came forward to lend a hand. With great effort, the four raised the lid from the chest, moved it to an uncluttered area of the tomb, and-with a chorus of grunts-laid it on the floor. It hit the black surface with a dull thud that reverberated throughout chamber three.
Inside the large onyx chest was a black cloth shot through with threads the color of gold. Stone touched it gingerly but-as before-the moment his fingers made contact, the cloth disappeared into a mist of fine dust, its corporeal form preserved five millennia only through a caprice of nature.
Below lay a sheet of beaten gold, covered with primitive hieroglyphs.
“Tina?” Stone asked, angling one of the lights toward the sheet of gold. “What do you make of these?”
Romero came forward, examined the glyphs. “They seem to refer to those papyri, laid out on the table,” she said after a moment. “I’d only begun to study them. It’s almost as if they were…”
“Were what?” Rush prompted.
“Invocations. But not of the usual type.”
“ What type?” Stone said, an edge of impatience in his voice.
She shrugged. “Almost like-instructions.”
“Why is that unusual?” Stone asked. “The entire New Kingdom’s Book of the Dead could be seen as an instruction manual.”
Romero didn’t answer.
Stone turned back to the chest. Nodding for Valentino’s men to remove the sheet of beaten gold, he eagerly
