Lincoln Child - The Third Gate

He glanced again over the silent group. “As I said, I have done my part. Now-now that we are so close-it is time to do yours. Our window of opportunity is short. I am relying on you all to give me one hundred and ten percent effort. Whatever your position here-whether you lead a dive team or you wash dishes in the mess-you are an integral, a critical part of a machine. Every last one of you is vital to our success. I want you to remember that in the coming days.”

Stone cleared his throat once again. “Somewhere beneath our feet are the unguessable treasures that Narmer gathered around himself, that he placed in his tomb to accompany him into the afterlife. Our discovery, and our study, of these treasures will not only make you all famous-they will make you rich. Not necessarily in monetary terms, though of course that is part of it. But most important, they will expand our knowledge of the earliest Egyptian kings a thousandfold-and that is the kind of richness that we, as the detectives of history, can never get enough of.”

There was another burst of applause. Stone let it continue for fifteen seconds, then thirty, before finally raising his hands again.

“I won’t keep you any longer,” he said. “You all have jobs to do. As I’ve said, over the next several days I’ll be wanting, and expecting, your very best. Are there any questions?”

“I’ve got one,” Logan heard himself say into the silence.

As a hundred and fifty heads turned to look at him, Logan wondered what on earth had made him speak up. It was something he’d been mulling over privately-but he hadn’t intended to voice his speculations aloud.

Porter Stone didn’t appear to have expected any questions, because he had already turned away to speak with March. At the sound of Logan’s voice, however, he turned back, searching the crowd.

“Dr. Logan?” Stone said, spotting him.

Logan nodded.

“What’s on your mind?”

“It’s something you said just now. You said that Narmer gathered his treasures around himself, placed them in his tomb, so they could accompany him to the next world. But I was wondering-isn’t it possible that, in building such a remote and secret tomb, he wasn’t simply amassing his valuables but hiding them, protecting them, as well?”

Stone frowned. “Of course. All kings tried to protect their earthly goods against vandals and tomb robbers.”

“That wasn’t the kind of protection I meant.”

There was a brief silence. Then Stone spoke again. “An interesting conjecture.” He raised his voice, spoke to the assembled group. “Thanks again for your time. You may all return to your stations now.”

As the crowd began to break up and move away, heading for the machine shop exit, Stone turned once again to Logan. “Not you,” he said. “I think we should talk.”

Porter Stone’s private office, at the end of one of the interior corridors of White, was a small but highly functional space. There was no power desk, no framed magazine covers sporting his image. Instead, there was a single round table surrounded by a half-dozen chairs; a few laptops; a shortwave radio. A single shelf held several books on Egyptology and the history of the dynastic line. There were no artifacts, grave goods, or decorations of any kind. The only thing on the wall was a single page displaying the current month, ripped roughly from a calendar and taped behind the conference table, as if to underscore the time pressure they were under.

Stone waved Logan toward the table. “Have a seat. Would you care for coffee, tea, mineral water?”

“I’m fine, thank you,” Logan said as he sat down.

Stone nodded, then took a seat across the table. For a moment he regarded Logan with his pale blue eyes, so prominent in the tanned face. “I wonder if you’d care to clarify what you said, back there in the machine shop.”

“I’ve been studying Narmer’s curse-and how it compares to other ancient Egyptian curses. It led me to think about something.”

Stone nodded. “Go on.”

“Many pharaohs owned priceless treasures-probably much more valuable than those of Narmer, who after all was a very early ruler. And yet none of them took anywhere near the trouble Narmer did to hide himself and his possessions. Certainly, they built pyramids in Giza, they built tombs in the Valley of the Kings-but they didn’t have themselves buried beyond their borders, in potentially hostile countries, hundreds of miles from their seats of power. They didn’t build false tombs to throw would-be looters off the scent. And Narmer’s curse, as dreadful as it is, is unusual: it doesn’t mention riches and gold. It all makes me wonder: Did Narmer have some other, overbearing concern, beyond merely keeping his valuables close?”

Stone had listened without moving. “Are you implying that, even more than his descendants, Narmer couldn’t risk having his sarcophagus defiled? He’d unified Egypt, but it was still a shaky unification; he couldn’t allow his tomb to be ransacked and his dynasty threatened?”

“That’s part of it. But not all. The incredible lengths he went to keep his tomb a secret-to me, it seems the work of a man who was protecting something, hiding something-something that was as valuable to him as life, or afterlife, itself. Something whose absence, in fact, might jeopardize the afterlife.”

For a moment, Stone simply looked at Logan. And then his face broke into a smile, and he laughed. Watching him, Logan had the distinct impression that he had just been tested-and had passed.

“Damn it, Jeremy-may I call you Jeremy? — this is the second time you’ve surprised me. I like the way your mind works. Sometimes I believe my specialists are so good at what they do, at their own little spheres of knowledge, that they forget there are other ways of looking at things.” He leaned forward. “And, as it happens, I believe that you’re exactly right.”

He stood up, walked to the door, opened it, and leaned out, asking his secretary for coffee. Then he returned to the table and pulled something from the pocket of his suit.

“What-the arrowhead again?” Logan said.

“Hardly.” Stone palmed something to Logan. It was the ostracon he’d seen in the reading room of the Museum of Egyptian Antiquities.

“Do you remember this?” Stone asked. “The ostracon that once belonged to Flinders Petrie?”

“Of course.”

Stone placed it on the table. “You remember it contains four hieroglyphs?”

“I remember that you were coy about their meaning.”

A soft knock, and the secretary entered with Stone’s coffee. He took a sip, then turned back to Logan. “Well, I’m not going to be coy anymore. You’ve graduated to the inner circle.” He regarded his guest, his eyes dancing with the same private amusement Logan had noticed before. “You recall that Narmer was-according to most Egyptologists-the unifier of upper and lower Egypt?”

“Yes,” Logan said.

“And you recall that he wore the ‘double’ crown, representing the red and the white crowns of the two Egypts-the sacred relics of the unification?”

Logan nodded.

Stone let his gaze roam slowly around the office for a moment. “It’s a very curious thing, Jeremy. Did you know that no crown of an Egyptian pharaoh has ever been found-not one? Even King Tut’s tomb, which was discovered intact and unlooted, containing absolutely everything he needed to take with him on his journey to the next world, contained no crown.”

He let this fact settle in a moment before going on. “There are several theories why. One is that the crown had magical properties that somehow prevented it from passing into the next world. Another-more popular among scholars, naturally-is that there was never more than one such crown in existence, passed down from one king to the next: thus it was the one thing that couldn’t be taken on the journey to the underworld. But the fact is, nobody knows for sure why one has never been found.”