Lincoln Child - The Third Gate

“And how far does this erudition extend exactly?”

Logan nodded toward the framed Egyptian wall painting. “Enough to guess that dates to the Amarna Period.”

“Really? What gives you that idea?”

“The busyness of the scene, the overlapping of bodies. The emphasis on the feminine form: hips, breasts. You don’t see that in earlier Egyptian art.”

For a moment, she looked at him. Then a smile slowly broke across her face. “Okay, Mr. Ghostly Detective. You’re clearly more than just a face from a magazine. Touche.”

Logan grinned in return.

She sat up again. “All right. Using geophysical analysis and remote aerial sensing techniques, we were able to identify what appeared to be the site of a funerary quarry. This was unusual, because the very early Egyptians usually buried their dead-even nobility and royalty-in sand pits. So as a result, March began a targeted excavation.”

“March?”

“Fenwick March. The head archaeologist for the project. He runs the show when Porter Stone isn’t around.”

“What did you find?”

“At first, what you’d expect. Early black-top pots with carbonized rims, pollen, paleozoological remains. But as work continued we realized just how large the site was.”

“Big enough to be the city where tomb builders and engineers were based?”

“Bingo. And then, we found this.” She stood up, walked over to a filing cabinet, and opened a drawer. Pulling out two rolled-up sheets, she walked back to the desk and handed one to him.

Logan unrolled it. He saw a color photograph of an ancient Egyptian inscription, incised and painted. It showed a seated ruler, along with lines and arrows and a variety of early pictographs.

“Recognize it?” Romero asked.

He glanced up. “It looks like some kind of stela.”

“Very good. A slab stela, to be precise. Know what’s written on it?”

Logan smiled. “My erudition only goes so far.”

“It’s a road map.”

“A road map? To where?”

Romero raised one hand, index finger extended. Then, very slowly, she pointed straight down, between her feet.

“My God,” Logan said.

“You must know how advanced the ancient Egyptians were in astronomy, in terms of mapping the sky. This stela was a map to show the engineers and builders how to get to the site of Narmer’s tomb during its construction. No doubt it was supposed to be destroyed, smashed to dust, once the tomb was complete. Lucky for us it wasn’t, because it allowed us to triangulate the tomb’s location to within a few miles. Once on the site, geological and scholarly analysis allowed us to narrow it down even farther.”

Logan thought of the Grid he’d seen on the flat-screen monitor in the dive Staging Area. “Incredible. Vintage Porter Stone.”

“Indeed. But Stone found something else. On the far side of that site.”

“What’s that?”

“A giant, square piece of black basalt. Apparently, the plinth for some kind of statuary-perhaps of Narmer himself. It had been polished to an agate gleam, even after all the intervening centuries. It contained something, too.” And she handed him the other sheet.

Logan took it. It was a photograph of another inscription, somewhat shorter.

“What is it?” Logan asked.

“It’s the reason you’re here.”

Logan looked at her. “I don’t understand.”

She returned the look with a smile, but this time the smile didn’t extend as far as her eyes. “It’s a curse.”

“A curse,” Logan repeated.

Christina Romero nodded.

Porter Stone had alluded to a curse. Logan had been wondering when the other shoe would drop.

“You mean, like the one supposedly on King Tut’s tomb? ‘Death shall come on swift wings’ and all that? That’s just a lot of rumormongering.”

“In the case of King Tut, you may be right. But curses were quite common in the Old Kingdom-and not only for private tombs. As the first king of a unified Egypt, Narmer wasn’t going to take any chances. His tomb could not be allowed to be desecrated-it could mean the dissolution of his kingdom. And so he left behind this curse as a warning.” She paused. “And what a warning.”

“What does it say exactly?”

Romero took back the photo of the inscription, glanced at it. “ ‘Any man who dares enter my tomb,’ ” she translated, “ ‘or do any wickedness to the resting place of my earthly form will meet an end certain and swift. Should he pass the first gate, the foundation of his house will be broken, and his seed will fall upon dry land. His blood and his limbs will turn to ash and his tongue cleave to his throat. Should he pass the second gate, darkness will follow him, and he will be chased by the serpent and the jackal. The hand that touches my immortal form will burn with unquenchable fire. But 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.’ ”

She replaced the sheet on the desk. For a moment, the office was silent.

“Quite a bedtime story,” Logan said.

“Isn’t it a beaut? Only a first-class bloodthirsty tyrant like Narmer could have invented it. Although come to think of it, his wife could have done the job, too. Niethotep. Talk about a match made in heaven.” Romero shook her head.

“Niethotep?”

“Now she was something. One of those bathe-in-the-blood-of-a-hundred-virgins psychos, supposedly. Narmer imported her from Scythia, royalty in her own right.” Romero turned back to the photograph. “Anyway, about the curse. It’s the longest example I’ve come across. It’s also by far the most specific. You heard the reference to the god of the deepest pit?”

Logan nodded.

“Notice he’s not identified by name. Not even Narmer, a god in his own right, dared do that. He’s referring to An’kavasht-He Whose Face Is Turned Backwards. A god of nightmare and evil that the earliest Egyptians were scared to death of. An’kavasht dwelled Outside, ‘in the endless night.’ Do you know what ‘Outside’ meant?”

“No, I don’t.”

“It meant the Sudd.” She paused to let this sink in. Then she took the two sheets, rolled them up again, and returned them to the filing cabinet. “Within fifty years or so, the advancing waters of the Sudd would have made any secrecy unnecessary. The swamp took care of the hiding for him.” She looked over at him. “But you know what? I don’t think Narmer was particularly worried about concealment. Remember, he was considered a god, and not just in a ceremonial way. Anybody messing with the tomb of a god is asking for trouble. He had an army of the dead-and this curse-to guard him. Nobody, not even the most brazen tomb robber, would dare defy such a curse.”

“What is that business about the three gates?”

“The gates are the sealed doors of a royal tomb. So it would appear that Narmer’s tomb had three chambers-three important chambers, at least.”

Logan shifted in his chair. “And this curse is the reason I’m here.”

“There have been several-how would March put it? — anomalous events since work started. Equipment malfunctioning. Items disappearing or turning up in the wrong place. An unusually high number of odd accidents.”

“And people are starting to get spooked,” Logan said.

“I wouldn’t say spooked. Restless, yes. Demoralized, maybe. See, it’s bad enough being out here in the middle of nowhere, floating in the world’s nastiest swamp. But with these strange happenings… well, you know how talk gets started. Anyway, maybe with you poking around, people will calm down.”