Douglas Preston - The Book of the Dead

Pendergast turned toward him. “Loftus?”

“Beside himself with anger at the moment.”

Pendergast nodded, his lips twitching in a brief semblance of a smile.

Suddenly a barrage of flashing lights on one of the live monitors attracted D’Agosta’s notice.

“What’s that?” Pendergast asked sharply.

“The strobes are firing up,” said Enderby, hunched over the keyboard.

“There are strobe lights in the show?”

“In the later part, yeah. You know, for special effects.”

Pendergast turned his attention to the monitor, the blue glow reflecting his intense gray eyes. More strobe lights flashed on, followed by a strange rumble.

Enderby suddenly sat up. “Wait. That’s not how it’s supposed to go.”

The audio feed from the tomb continued over the monitor, carrying a rising murmur from the audience along with it. Pendergast turned to Hayward. “Captain, during your security review, you consulted a set of plans to the tomb and adjacent areas, I assume?”

“I did.”

“If you had to, what would the best point be to force an entry into the tomb from outside?”

Hayward thought for a moment. “There’s a corridor that connects the 81st Street subway station to the museum’s subway entrance. It goes behind the back of the tomb, and there’s a point where the masonry’s only twenty-four inches thick between the walkway and the burial chamber.”

“Twenty-four inches of what?”

“Concrete and rebar. It’s a load-bearing wall.”

“Twenty-four inches of concrete,” D’Agosta murmured. “Might as well be a hundred feet. We can’t shoot through that, and we can’t chop through it. Not in time.”

A dreadful hush fell over the little room, punctuated only by the strange booming from inside the hall, and the accompanying murmur of the crowd. As D’Agosta watched, Pendergast’s shoulders sank visibly. It’s happening, he thought with a thrill of horror. Diogenes is winning. He’s thought of everything and there’s not a damn thing we can do about it.

But then, as he watched, he saw Pendergast start visibly. The agent’s eyes grew bright, and he breathed in sharply. Then he turned toward one of the guards.

“You-your name?”

“Rivera, sir.”

“You know where the Taxidermy Department is?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Go down there and find me a bottle of glycerol.”

“Glycerol?”

“It’s a chemical used for softening animal skins-there’s certain to be some down there.” Next, Pendergast turned to Manetti. “Send a couple of your guards down to the chemistry lab. I need bottles of sulfuric acid and nitric acid. They’ll find them where the hazardous chemicals are stored.”

“May I ask-?”

“No time to explain. I’m also going to need a separation funnel with a stopcock on the bottom, as well as distilled water. And a thermometer, if they can find one.” Pendergast looked around, found a sheet of paper and a pencil, scribbled some quick notes, and handed the paper to Manetti. “Have them ask a lab technician if they have any problems.”

Manetti nodded.

“In the meantime, clear the hall, please. I want everyone out except NYPD and museum guards.”

“Done.” Manetti motioned to the two guards and they exited the control room.

Pendergast turned to the technicians. “There’s nothing more you can do here. Evacuate with the others.”

They both jumped up, only too eager to get out.

Now Pendergast turned to D’Agosta. “Vincent? I have a job for you and Captain Hayward. Go to the subway station. Help her identify that weak point in the wall.”

D’Agosta exchanged glances with Hayward. “Right.”

“And Vincent? That cable you just cut?” Pendergast gestured toward one of the screens. “Diogenes must have arranged a hidden backup: the simulcast is continuing. Please take care of it.”

“We’re on it.” And D’Agosta left the room, Hayward at his side.

This is just marvelous!” said the mayor, whispering loudly in Nora’s ear. The holographic tomb robbers, having trashed the burial chamber, were now approaching the open sarcophagus itself. They trembled, hesitated-until one finally dared look in.

“Gold!” the man’s recorded voice gasped. “Solid gold!”

The voice-over intoned:

And now comes the moment of truth. The robbers are gazing inside the sarcophagus at the solid gold coffin of Senef. To the ancient Egyptians, gold was more than a precious metal. They worshiped it as sacred. It was the only substance they knew that didn’t tarnish, fade, or corrode. They considered it to be immortal, the substance making up the very skin of the gods themselves. The coffin represented the immortal pharaoh, resurrected in his skin of gold: the same skin that Ra, the Sun God, wore on his journey across the sky, showering his golden light over the earth.

Everything else they have stolen is merely a prelude to this: the heart of the tomb.

The show continued as the robbers threw up a makeshift tripod of wooden timbers over the sarcophagus, rigged with a block and tackle, to lift off the top of the heavy gold coffin. Two of them climbed into the sarcophagus and began affixing ropes to the coffin inside-and then, with a shout of triumph, the others began to heave and the huge gold coffin lid rose into the light, glittering and magnificent. The audience gasped.

The narrator’s recorded voice began again:

Unbeknownst to the robbers, the sun has now set. The Ba-soul of Senef will be returning to inhabit his mummy for the night, where it will reanimate his dry bones during the hours of darkness.

Here it was: the unleashing of the Ba-soul, the culmination of the curse of Senef. Nora, knowing what was about to come, braced herself.

There was a noise from inside the coffin-a muffled groan. The robbers paused in their work, the gold coffin lid swinging from the ropes. And then the fog machines kicked in and a whitish mist began bubbling up out of the sarcophagus and sliding down its sides. A gasp went up from the audience. Nora smiled to herself. A trifle hokey, perhaps, but effective.

Now a roll of thunder sounded, and through the rising fog the strobes in the corners of the ceiling began to flash, to the accompaniment of ominous rumblings. The strobes began to speed up… and then all four went out of sync, flashing at different rates.

Damn, a glitch. Nora looked around for a technician before realizing they were, of course, all in the control room, monitoring the show by remote. No doubt they would fix it in a moment.

As the strobes continued to accelerate and decelerate at opposing rates, a second rumble sounded-an incredibly low and deep vibration, just at the threshold of human hearing. Now it seemed the sound system was malfunctioning, too. The deep sound was joined by another, and then another: more like physical vibrations in the gut than actual sound.

Oh, no, she thought. The computers are royally messing up. And it was all going so well…

She glanced around again, but the crowd hadn’t noticed the glitch-they assumed it was just part of the show. If the technicians could fix it soon, maybe nobody would know. She hoped they were on the ball.

Now the strobes were speeding up even further, except for one-particularly bright-that kept flashing, not quite in time… the lights blended to form a kind of visual Doppler effect that almost made Nora dizzy.

With a deep groaning sound, the mummy abruptly rose from the sarcophagus. The holographic robbers fell back with shrieks of terror-at least that part of the show was still working-some dropping their torches in fright, the light flickering off their staring faces as they cringed in fear.

Senef!

But somehow the mummy didn’t look right to Nora-it was bigger, darker, somehow more menacing. Then a bony arm broke free of its bandages-something not even in the script-and, clawing and twitching, reached up to its own swathed face. The arm was distorted, as elongated as an ape’s. The bony fingers sank into the linen wrappings and ripped them away, revealing a visage of such horror that Nora gasped, backing up instinctively. This was over-the-top-way over-the-top. Was this some joke of Wicherly’s? Obviously, something this dreadful, this effective, had to be carefully programmed-it wasn’t a mere glitch.