Lincoln Child - The Third Gate

“Instructions?” Stone said, his voice dripping with skepticism. “Instructions for what?”

This was met by a brief silence.

“It sounds like a paradox.” Logan turned to Romero. “You say the ancient Egyptians believed the heart was critical for surviving in the next world.”

Romero nodded. “Once in the netherworld, the pharaoh’s heart would have been inspected, tested by Anubis, in a ceremony known as the Weighing of the Heart. At least, that was the belief of later Egyptians.”

“But death occurs when the heart stops. How could a stopped heart be of any use to Narmer in the next-” Logan paused abruptly. “Wait. What was it you said earlier? You said that this entire tomb seemed to be almost a rehearsal for Narmer’s death, for his passage to the next world. A dry run, so to speak. Right?”

Romero nodded.

Logan looked from her, to the contents of the tomb, and then back to her again. All of a sudden-with a flash like a thunderstroke-he understood.

“Oh, my God,” he whispered. “The Baghdad Battery.”

For a moment, nobody moved. Then-as slowly as he had dropped to his knees-Stone stood up again, turned, and faced Logan.

“Just before the Second World War,” Logan continued, “some artifacts were found in a village just outside Baghdad. The artifacts were very old, and their purpose was unclear. A terracotta pot; a copper sheet in the shape of a cylinder, topped by an iron rod. A few others. They were ignored until the director of Iraq’s National Museum stumbled onto them in the museum’s collections. He published a paper theorizing that these artifacts-when properly filled with citric acid, or vinegar, or some other liquid capable of generating electrolytic voltage-originally functioned as a primitive galvanic cell. A battery.”

Everyone remained silent, all eyes on Logan.

“I’ve heard of all this,” Stone said. “That battery was small, weak, perhaps used for the ceremonial electroplating of objects.”

“True,” Logan said. “It was weak. But it didn’t have to be.”

“Jesus.” Romero pointed to the objects sitting at Stone’s feet. “Are you implying-”

Carefully, Logan picked up the red-enameled object, topped by the iron rod and the curled piece of copper. Next, he picked up the bowl-shaped marble object, the long filaments of gold trailing. Very gingerly, he placed the red device atop the white one. They fit together perfectly.

“The double crown,” Romero said.

“Exactly,” Logan said. “But a ‘crown’ with a very special-even divine-purpose. Note the elements it is composed of. Copper. Iron. Gold. Add lemon juice or vinegar, and you’d have a battery-but potentially much stronger than the one found buried in Mesopotamia.”

“That urn in the corner,” Romero said. “It smelled like vinegar.”

“And those gold filaments,” Dr. Rush added. “You’re guessing they could serve as… electrodes?”

“Yes,” Logan said. “Properly placed on the chest, they could be used to stop the heart.”

“Stop the heart,” Stone repeated. “A dress rehearsal for death.”

“Perhaps more than one rehearsal,” Logan said. “Look at the extra materials stored in those golden boxes.”

Stone held out his hands. Logan carefully passed over the crown apparatus.

“A dress rehearsal for death,” Stone repeated. He gave the crown a brief, almost loving caress.

“It might be even more than that,” Romero said. “Remember the tremendous importance the ancient Egyptians placed on the heart. By stopping the heart-and then restarting it-it might not only be a preparation for King Narmer, but a validation of his divinity as well.”

“Of course,” said Stone. “A way to establish, prove, his divinity-and the divinity of his line.”

Logan looked at the expedition director. Over the last few minutes, Stone’s voice had grown a little more excited, his movements a little more animated. True, this discovery was no jewel-encrusted crown-but in some ways it was even more remarkable.

“And that would explain why the ‘crowns’ were kept here,” Romero said. “In the most sacred and secret place in the tomb, the holy of holies. It explains why such a dreadful curse was placed on the third gate. Narmer must have feared that, if anyone else were to get his hands on the crown-if anyone else were to experiment with making the journey to the next world-he might gain his power, perhaps even supplant him… both in this world and the next.”

Logan stared at the double crown in Stone’s hands. What was it Jennifer had said, during her final crossings? That which brings life to the dead… and death to the living.

How could she possibly have known about that?

He cleared his throat. Something had just occurred to him-something he almost did not want to mention.

Stone glanced toward him, his hands still grasping the double crown. “Jeremy?”

Logan shrugged. “I can’t help but wonder. If this device was an invention of Narmer’s, for the pharaoh to use as a trial run for what he’d experience after the death of the physical body, a way of preparing himself for the next world…” He stopped. All eyes were on him.

“Given the beliefs of the ancient Egyptians,” he went on. “About the nature of the soul, I mean… might they not have believed that such a device could release the soul, the life force, from the body-and in so doing, achieve instant immortality?”

The silence that followed this was interrupted by a harsh squawk. One of the security guards plucked a radio from his belt; spoke into it for a moment; listened to the reply, awash in static. Then he held the radio out toward Stone.

“Dr. Stone?” he said. “A message from the surface. They say it’s important.”

Cory Landau sat in the Operations Center, feet up on one of the consoles, swigging from a twenty-four-ounce plastic bottle of Jolt Wild Grape. He’d recently finished reading The House on the Borderland and was now well and truly freaked out. His shift wouldn’t end for another four hours; he’d brought nothing else to read; and the still, tomblike atmosphere of Operations was getting on his nerves. As a distraction, he’d begun running through video feeds from various locations around the Station, but things were depressingly quiet. There was a lot of activity at the Staging Area, but it consisted mostly of people monitoring various consoles or standing around the Maw. As for the tomb itself, the cameras had been turned off in chamber two-apparently at Porter Stone’s request-so there was nothing to see down there, either. A few minutes earlier, there had been some excitement around the archaeology labs in Red, but that seemed to have settled down as well. Basically, the entire Station felt as if it was in a holding pattern, awaiting word from the party that had recently entered chamber three of the tomb.

He took another deep swig, sighed, twirled his Zapata mustache, and cycled through a fresh set of video feeds as if channel-surfing a television. He did not notice Jennifer Rush silently enter the Operations Center. He did not notice as she slowly approached a bank of consoles, then hesitated several moments, seemingly studying them. He did not notice when she lifted a red plastic protective shield on one of the consoles, then snapped the toggle switch beneath it from the on to the off position. He grew aware of her presence only when she turned from the console and, walking away, stumbled into a rack of diagnostic equipment, knocking some loose cabling to the floor.

“Whoa!” Landau said as he wheeled around, Jolt sloshing over his hand. Then he smiled as he recognized Jennifer, the doctor’s wife. She was, he’d already discovered, a real babe, but standoffish, with a reserve that had always completely intimidated him. Oddly enough, she was dressed in a hospital gown, but Landau didn’t mind-it was, he noticed, quite revealing.