Lincoln Child - The Third Gate

Stone frowned. “Explain.”

“Well…” Romero hesitated. “Some of the inscriptions seem to have been carved and painted a little crudely-as if they were rushed.”

“You forget we’re dealing with the archaic period,” March sniffed. “The First Dynasty. Egypt’s skill with the decorative arts was still in its infancy.”

Romero shrugged, clearly unconvinced. “In any case, many of the items and inscriptions are unique to Egyptian history. They speak of gods, practices, rituals, and even beliefs that are at odds with the conventional wisdom; with what followed in later periods-the Intermediate Periods, the New Kingdom.”

“I don’t follow,” Stone said.

“It’s difficult to describe, because everything’s so new and unfamiliar, and I’ve just begun to analyze it. But it’s almost as if…” She paused again. “When I first looked at the inscriptions, at the names of the gods evoked, gender, sequence of ritual, that sort of thing, it almost seemed as if… Narmer got it wrong. But then of course I realized that was impossible. Narmer was the first: this is clearly the oldest tomb of an Egyptian pharaoh ever found. So I can only assume that, well, the transfer of Narmer’s beliefs and practices to future generations was faulty. It’s as if his descendants didn’t understand what Narmer was trying to do, and so they aped it, ritually, without fully fathoming it. See, there are certain things about ancient Egyptian ritual that we still don’t comprehend, that seem self-contradictory. It’s entirely possible that-if we reexamine these now, in light of the Narmer ‘original’-we’ll be able to pinpoint the differences and articulate them. I’ll know more once I’ve analyzed things further. Any way you look at it, though, this is going to turn Egyptology on its head.”

Stone rubbed his jaw. “Fascinating. Any thoughts as to the-the tomb guardian?”

“At first I thought it was a representation of Ammut-the Swallowing Monster-who-in later Egyptian belief systems, anyway-sends unworthy souls to the Devourer of the Dead. But then I realized the morphology was wrong. It’s only conjecture, but I think it may be a very rough and primitive rendering of the god that, in the Middle Kingdom, would come to be known as Aapep. In later years he would be depicted as a crocodile, or a serpent. This is in keeping with the figure we saw. Aapep was the god of darkness, chaos, the eater of souls, the personification of everything evil. Interesting choice of babysitter.” She paused. “We may be seeing an extremely early version of this god, before Amemit and Aapep developed fully individual identities.”

Logan saw Rush catch his gaze. The eater of souls, Logan thought. This was the god Jennifer had referred to, as well. How could she have known that, he wondered, unless a voice from the ancient past told her? The doctor looked tired-and Logan wasn’t surprised. It had taken Jennifer almost two hours to revive from the previous day’s crossing.

“Of course,” Romero went on, “we don’t yet know exactly how this god figures in Narmer’s theogony-or what he represented at such an early period.”

“What about the primary tomb painting?” Stone asked. “The one that appears to represent a punishment of some sort?”

“I don’t know any more than I did yesterday. Sorry. It’s completely foreign to my experience.”

“And the second gate?”

“From what I can tell by visual inspection, the royal seal appears to be similar to the first.”

“Thank you.” Stone turned to Dr. Rush. “And you, Ethan?”

Rush shifted in his seat, cleared his throat. “My analysis of the atmosphere, dust from tomb surfaces, and grit from the plaster is complete. Everything appears to be inert. There’s a relatively high concentration of mold spores and pollen, but nothing to be alarmed about if exposure times are kept limited. A careful cleaning, of course, will take care of that. I found no evidence of harmful bacteria, viruses, or fungi. Until the decontamination process is complete, I’d recommend N-ninety-five facepiece respirators be worn for particulate filtering, along with latex gloves, but you would mandate that as standard procedure, anyway.”

“Poison?” Stone asked.

“Nothing came up on my tests.”

Stone nodded his satisfaction, then turned to one of the others. “GPR report?”

A thin, nervous-looking young man sat forward and pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “Ground-penetrating radar, targeting the second chamber, shows a very large mass-apparently a single object-approximate dimensions four meters in length and two in height. Arranged before it are four smaller, identical objects.”

There was a brief silence.

“A sarcophagus,” March murmured.

“And its four canopic jars,” Romero added.

“Perhaps.” Stone frowned. “But in the second chamber-not the third?”

“There appear to be several other objects,” the young man said, “but the back-scatter makes them difficult to distinguish effectively.”

“Very well.” Stone thought for a moment. “We’ll spend the rest of the day securing, stabilizing, and decontaminating chamber one. Then, first thing tomorrow, we’ll proceed to the second gate. Meanwhile, if in your analysis any of you discover anything particularly unusual, let me know at once.”

He turned to Logan. “Speaking of that, is there anything you’d like to add, Jeremy?”

“Yes. Last evening, I spoke with Fontaine. He’d reported that one of the electronic devices under his care had been acting strangely-turning on at unexpected times, working when it wasn’t supposed to, operating by itself.”

Very softly, Romero whistled the Twilight Zone theme.

“The machine in question was one of the satellite phones. When I learned that both these incidents had occurred at one thirty a.m., I asked Fontaine to check the flash memory of the sat phone.”

“And?” Stone said.

“Its internal log showed a total of four unauthorized satellite uplinks, each made at precisely 1:34 a.m. local time. The uplinks were encrypted e-mails, each sent to an Internet remailing service, rendering them untraceable.”

The room fell into a shocked silence.

Stone had gone ashen. “How is that possible? Nobody has access to the sat phones; they can only be used by the communications officers.”

“Further examination of the phone showed it had been tricked out with a hand-built internal circuit board. Fontaine is examining the board with an oscilloscope and signal generator, but its function appears to be to receive wireless text messages from the Station’s WAN, encrypt them, and send them out to the satellite at a very late hour when the communications room would be unoccupied. The satellite then forwards the messages to their destination.”

Another, longer silence. Logan noticed the assembled group glancing around at one another uncomfortably.

“Who knows about this?” Stone asked.

“Fontaine, myself, and-now-those in this room.”

Stone licked his lips. “This is to go no farther. Understood? Nobody else is to know.” He shook his head. “Good Christ. A spy.”

“Or a saboteur,” said Romero.

“Or both,” Logan added.

Tina Romero made her way down the Umbilicus, hand under hand, following Porter Stone. She wore no respirator on this descent, just an N-95 mask, and the air both smelled and tasted faintly of vegetative rot. As she descended, it grew cooler, until by the time she had reached the air lock platform there were goose pimples on her arms.

A guard on the platform greeted them with a nod. Since Logan’s discovery of the unauthorized transmissions, Stone-obsessive about secrecy at the best of times-had doubled the usual security. In addition to a twenty-four-hour guard stationed at the Maw, there was also the guard here on the platform. In addition, video cameras had been installed, monitored by Corey Landau and the other tech weenies in the Operations Center.