Douglas Preston - The Book of the Dead

The technician hesitated, staring at the badge. Then he shrugged and turned to the other. “Larry, initiate the door release sequence, please.”

Hayward glanced at the second technician and noted it was Larry Enderby, a staff member she had questioned about the attempted murder of Margo Green, and again about the diamond theft. He seemed to be in the wrong place at the wrong time a lot these days.

“If you say so,” Enderby said a little dubiously.

He had just begun to type when Manetti charged in, his face red, followed by two guards.

“What’s going on?” he said.

“We’ve got a problem,” said Hayward. “We’re stopping the show.”

“You aren’t stopping anything without a damn good reason.”

“No time to explain.”

Enderby had paused in his typing, his fingers hovering over the keyboard, looking from Hayward to Manetti and back.

“I’ve been as accommodating as I can, Captain Hayward,” Manetti said. “But now you’ve gone too far. This opening is critical to the museum. Everyone who counts is here and we’ve got a live audience of millions. No way am I going to allow anything or anybody to disrupt that.”

“Stand down, Manetti,” Hayward said in a clipped voice. “I’ll take full responsibility. Something is about to go terribly wrong.”

“No go, Captain,” Manetti said brusquely. He gestured at the television. “See for yourself. Everything’s fine.” He reached over and turned up the sound:

In the fifth year of the reign of the pharaoh Thutmosis IV…

Hayward turned back to Enderby. “Open those doors now.”

“Hold off on that order, Enderby,” Manetti said.

The technician’s hands, still poised above the keyboard, began to tremble.

Manetti glanced past Hayward and abruptly caught sight of Pendergast. “What the hell? Aren’t you supposed to be in prison?”

“I said, open the goddamn doors,” Hayward barked.

“Something’s not right.” Manetti began to fumble for his radio.

Pendergast moved smoothly forward. He turned his bruised face to Manetti and said in a courteous voice, “My sincerest apologies.”

“What for?”

The blow came so fast that it was little more than a blur, and with a muffled oof! Manetti doubled over. With a smooth, swift gesture, Pendergast whisked Manetti’s sidearm out of its holster and pointed it at the two guards.

“Weapons, batons, pepper spray, radios, on the floor,” he said.

The two guards obeyed.

Pendergast plucked one of their guns from its holster and handed it to D’Agosta. “Watch them.”

“Right.”

Pendergast took the second guard’s gun and tucked it in his waistband as a spare. Then he turned back to Manetti, who was on his knees, one hand cradling his midriff, trying to suck in air.

“I am truly sorry. There’s a conspiracy under way to destroy everybody in the tomb. We’re going to try to stop it, whether you like it or not. Now: where is Hugo Menzies?”

“You’re in big trouble, pal,” Manetti gasped. “Even bigger than you were before.” And he began to rise.

D’Agosta raised the gun threateningly, and Manetti froze. “Menzies is in the tomb with the rest,” he said after a moment.

Pendergast turned to the technicians and spoke, his voice icy and laced with menace. “Mr. Enderby? You heard the order: open the doors.”

The technician, thoroughly frightened, nodded and began to type on the keyboard. “No problem, sir, I’ll have them open in a jiffy.”

A momentary silence.

Another staccato bunch of keystrokes, then another pause. Enderby frowned.

“Seems we got a glitch here…”

In the fifth year of the reign of the pharaoh Thutmosis IV, Senef-the grand vizier and former regent to the young pharaoh-died of unknown causes. He was buried in a grand tomb in the Valley of the Kings that had been under construction for twelve years. Although Senef had never been a pharaoh himself, he was buried in the Valley of the Kings as befitted one who acted as regent to a pharaoh and who probably retained pharaonic-like power after the assumption to the throne of his former ward. The Great Tomb of Senef was filled with all the riches ancient Egypt could provide: grave goods in gold and silver, lapis, carnelian, alabaster, onyx, granite, and adamant, as well as furniture, foodstuffs, statues, chariots, games, and weapons. No expense was spared.

In the tenth year of his reign, Thutmosis fell ill. His son, Amenhotep III, was declared pharaoh by a faction of the army, opposed by the priesthood. There was a rebellion in Upper Egypt, and the Land of the Two Kingdoms fell into strife and chaos.

It was a good time to rob a tomb.

And so, one morning at dawn, the high priests assigned to guard the Great Tomb of Senef began to dig…

The voice-over paused. Nora stood in the darkened corridor of the God’s Second Passage, shoulder-to-shoulder with the mayor and his wife. Viola Maskelene stood just beyond them. The sounds of digging grew louder, the chuff-chuff of the shovels rising in crescendo with the excited voices of the tomb robbers. A muffled cheer, the scraping of shovel on stone, and then the sharp crack of plaster seals being struck off with a pick, one by one. All around her, the audience-three hundred handpicked VIPs, the movers and shakers of New York-watched, enthralled.

As the show continued, there was a rumble and grinding of stone: the robbers were dragging aside the outer tomb door. A crack of light appeared, throwing a brilliant beam into the dim space. A moment later, the digitized faces of the tomb robbers appeared, eagerly scurrying in and lighting torches. They were dressed in the garb of ancient Egyptians. Although Nora had seen this all before, she was still amazed at how realistic the holographic robbers looked.

A new set of projectors took over seamlessly, throwing images onto artfully placed screens, and the tomb robbers appeared to creep fearfully along the passageway ahead of the visitors. With gestures and hisses, the ghostly robbers turned and urged the audience to follow along behind them-including them as accomplices. This helped assure that the crowd would now move on to the next stage of the sound-and-light show-which took place in the Hall of the Chariots.

As she moved with the crowd, Nora felt a shiver of pride. It was an excellent script-Wicherly had done a masterful job. For all his personal failings, he had been abundantly talented. She was also proud of her own creative contribution. Hugo Menzies had guided the overall project with a subtle and sure hand, while proving equally clever with the nuts and bolts of bringing the show together. The technicians and A/V crew had done a splendid job with the visuals. Judging from the mesmerized audience, so far it was going very well.

As the crowd walked down the corridor toward the well, following the video images of the tomb robbers, lights placed behind hidden panels flickered, simulating the effect of torchlight on the walls. The crowd flow was working perfectly, the audience automatically moving at the pace of the robbers.

At the well, the robbers paused, their voices raised in discussion of how to bridge the dangerous pit. Several of them carried thin tree trunks over their shoulders, which they proceeded to lash together. Using a crude pulley and winch system, they lowered the logs and swung them across the well to make a bridge. The projected images then inched across the swaying, creaking bridge as if on a tightrope. A cry rang out as one of the figures slipped from the bridge, plunging with a hideous scream into the darkness of the pit-cut off suddenly in a sickening smack of meat hitting stone. The audience gasped.

“Goodness,” said the mayor’s wife. “That was rather… realistic.”