Lincoln Child - The Third Gate

“Hi, there,” he said. “Your husband’s down with the expedition team, isn’t he? You here to watch the return of the conquering heroes? I’ve got the best seats in the house.” And he gestured at an empty chair not far from his, overlooking the central bank of monitors.

Jennifer Rush didn’t answer. Instead, she walked toward him, then past him, and then out the far door. She was cradling something in one of her hands.

At first, Landau assumed she was preoccupied, or just plain rude-he’d rarely seen her talk to anybody-rarely seen her, period. Then he’d noticed her opaque, cloudy eyes; her strange, shambling, almost robotic gait, as if the act of walking itself was a novelty.

As her form disappeared down the corridor, he nodded knowingly to himself. “Plastered,” he murmured. Not that he blamed her-being stuck out here at the ass end of nowhere was enough to start anybody drinking.

–

J ennifer Rush continued on slowly, a little unsteadily, past a series of conference rooms, until she stood before the barrier that gave onto the pontoon-supported access tube leading to Maroon. She turned and opened the final door before the barrier, a heavy hatch with a label that read POWER SUBSTATION-WHITE.

The interior was cramped, a forest of thick tubing and small, blinking lights. Along the far wall were rows of dials and gauges, and a technician stood before them, peering curiously at a few, while making notations on a clipboard. At the sound of the hatch opening, he turned. The light was dim, but the technician recognized the woman standing in the hatchway.

“Oh. Hello, Mrs. Rush,” he said. “Can I help you with something?”

Instead of answering, Jennifer Rush took a step inside. The faint lighting made her features indistinct.

“I’ll be with you in a jiffy,” the technician said. “Just let me finish inspecting these controls. It’s my duty shift in Methane Processing, and a few seconds ago I started to get some weird error messages.” He turned back to the gauges. “Almost as if the safety protocols had been disengaged. But that’s impossible, you’d have to deliberately-”

Hearing another sound behind him, he turned back once again. Immediately, the smile on his face vanished, his expression turning to surprise and concern. Jennifer Rush had placed the items she was carrying on the floor, knelt over a bank of heavy valves, and was-once again, movements slow and awkward, but deliberate-turning one of them.

“Hey!” the technician said. “You can’t do that-you’re opening the emergency relief valve!”

Dropping his clipboard, he hurried over. Jennifer Rush did not protest when he gently propelled her to one side.

“You don’t want to be doing that,” he said, grasping the valve and preparing to close it again. “Open this, and we’d start venting concentrated methane throughout the crawl space beneath this wing. It would only be a matter of minutes until-”

An explosive impact against the base of his neck-a sudden wave of pain-and then a concussive burst of light that filled his field of vision before giving way to oblivion.

Jennifer Rush watched as the technician crumpled to the metal floor of the substation. Then she dropped the wrench she’d picked up, bent over the relief valve, and once again began to slowly open it wide, turning, turning, turning…

Logan watched as Porter Stone handed the radio back to the guard. The conversation had been brief; Stone himself had said fewer than a half-dozen words. As he’d listened to the voice on the radio, his face had initially gone deathly pale. But now-as he looked at each of the expedition members in turn-his face went dark, almost purple. His pupils retreated to mere glittering pinpoints. His gaze fastened at last on Tina Romero.

Suddenly, he stepped forward. “Bitch!” he snapped, throwing one hand back in preparation for striking her. Immediately, Dr. Rush and Valentino rushed forward, restraining him.

“Idiot!” he cried, struggling to free himself. Romero took an instinctual step back.

Logan looked on in shock. It was as if all the setbacks and vicissitudes of this expedition-capped just now by the discovery that Narmer’s crown was, in fact, completely unexpected and bizarre-had caused the normally dispassionate Stone to snap, to lash out in frustration and anger.

“Incompetent!” Stone shouted at the Egyptologist. “Thanks to you, all my effort, all my money-wasted! And now, there’s no time… No time!”

Logan came forward. “Dr. Stone, calm down,” he said. “Just what exactly has happened?”

With an effort, Stone mastered himself. He freed himself from Rush and Valentino, who nevertheless stayed close.

“I’ll tell you what’s happened,” he said, his breathing loud and ragged. “That was Amanda Richards on the horn. She was repairing the damage to Narmer’s mummy-when she learned it wasn’t Narmer, after all.”

There was a moment of shocked silence.

“What do you mean-not Narmer?” Dr. Rush asked.

“That mummy was a woman. All this time, we’ve been working the wrong damned tomb.” He looked back at Romero. “No wonder nothing’s as it should be. You’ve led us to the wrong spot-a subsidiary tomb, for his queen, or-or a concubine! My God!” His hands balled into fists, and he seemed about to lash out once again. Rush and Valentino moved in still closer.

“Just a minute,” Logan said. “There can’t be any mistake. The seals, the inscriptions, the treasure-even the curse-everything indicates the resting place of a pharaoh. This has to be Narmer’s tomb.”

For a moment, nobody spoke. Stone struggled to get his breathing under control. “If this is Narmer’s tomb,” he said, “then where the hell’s his mummy?”

“Wait a minute,” said Logan. “Just hold on a minute. Don’t be so hasty-let’s think this through.” He turned to Tina Romero. “Haven’t you said, all along, that there have been things in this tomb that didn’t add up-that didn’t make sense?”

She nodded. “Little things, mostly. I ascribed them to the fact this was the tomb of the first pharaoh; it was only natural that we’d find the unexpected. The later tradition hadn’t yet been fully established.”

“Excuses,” Stone said. “Mere excuses, nothing more. You’re just trying to explain away your stupidity.”

Ignoring this, Romero turned toward Logan. “It first started when you mentioned that skull to me. The one you examined, the skull of one of Narmer’s priests, ritually killed to protect the secrecy and sanctity of Narmer’s tomb. Do you remember telling me that one of the eye sockets-the left-had scratches?”

Logan nodded.

“And that was just the first sign that something was amiss. The rest of the signs are right here, among us. The serekhs we found in the tomb’s royal seals-the glyphs are Narmer’s, but they aren’t quite right. They have unusual features, like the feminine ending of niswt-biti. Then there are those inscriptions in chamber one, with the ritual sequences reversed, the gender wrong. And the glyphs on this chest, here, with the head of the catfish, Narmer’s symbol, scratched out.”

“You said it had been altered,” Logan added. “Defaced.”

“What are you getting at?” Stone growled.

“That mark in the eye socket of the priest’s skull,” Romero said. “I’d assumed it was just decay, damage over time. But the fact is, that was the ritual way a priest or priestess of a queen would be killed-a knife through the eye into the brain. That way, symbolically, the queen would not be viewed in death. At the tomb burial of a king, the priests were killed by a knife blow to the base of a skull, severing the spinal column.”

“So this is the tomb of Narmer’s queen,” Stone said. “Niethotep. That’s my whole damn point! It’s the wrong tomb!”