The Book of the Dead

by Richard Preston

  “The head of the Anthropology Department. Menzies. Hugo Menzies.”

  Another pause, much briefer, before Pendergast spoke again. “Tell me, Captain, what’s the program for this evening?”

  Pendergast seemed, in a way, to be waking up.

  “Hors d’oeuvres and cocktails, seven to eight. The ribbon cutting and opening of the tomb, eight to nine. Dinner at nine-thirty.”

  “Opening of the tomb—I assume that includes a tour?”

  “A tour with a sound-and-light show. Nationally televised.”

  “A sound-and-light show?”

  “Yes.”

  Pendergast’s voice—which had been so hollow and remote—was now laced with urgency. “For God’s sake, Captain, hurry!”

  Hayward shot between two cabs that were stubbornly refusing to let her pass, clipping one bumper in the process. Glancing in the rearview mirror, she saw it fly upward, bouncing and flipping in a shower of sparks.

  “What am I missing here?” D’Agosta asked.

  “Captain Hayward is right,” Pendergast said. “This is it—the ‘perfect crime’ Diogenes boasted about.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Listen carefully,” Pendergast said. He hesitated briefly. “I will only speak of this once. A wrong was done to my brother, many years ago. He was exposed—inadvertently, but exposed nevertheless—to a sadistic device. It was a ‘house of pain,’ its sole purpose to drive its victim insane or kill him from sheer fright. And now Diogenes—in the person of Menzies, whom he is no doubt posing as—will, through some hidden means of his own, re-create this at the opening tonight. Eli Glinn said it: Diogenes is motivated by a feeling of victimization. My brother wants to perpetrate the wrong done to him, but on a large scale. And, with a live television broadcast, the scale could be large indeed. This is what he has been building up to. All the rest was merely sideshow.”

  He sank back in the rear seat and fell silent once again.

  The car careened off the West Side Highway at the 79th Street exit ramp, then accelerated eastward toward the rear of the museum. In the distance ahead, all seemed calm—there were no flashing police lights, no hovering helicopters.

  Maybe it hasn’t happened yet.

  She tore right on Columbus, made the dogleg around 77th Street with a screeching of rubber, and flew onto Museum Drive, jamming on her brakes before a crush of idling limousines, taxis, and spectators. The squad car slewed sideways before the crowd and she leaped out, waving her badge, D’Agosta already in the lead, a one-man flying wedge.

  “Captain Hayward, NYPD Homicide!” she cried. “Make way!”

  The crowds parted in confusion, the slower ones scattered by D’Agosta, and in a moment they were at the velvet ropes. Without even pausing, D’Agosta knocked down a guard who had stepped in front of them. Hayward flashed her shield at the astonished police officers on duty and they sprinted up the carpeted steps toward the huge bronze doors of the museum.

  55

  Nora Kelly stepped down from the podium into a sea of applause, enormously relieved that her short speech had gone well. She had been the last speaker, directly following George Ashton, the mayor, and Viola Maskelene, and now the main event was about to begin: the cutting of the ribbon and the opening of the Tomb of Senef.

  Viola joined up with her. “Brilliant speech,” she said. “You were actually interesting.”

  “As were you.”

  She saw Hugo Menzies gesturing for them to come over. She pushed through the crowd, Viola following. Menzies’s face was florid, his blue eyes sparkling, his white tie and tails giving him the air of an impresario. His arm was linked with that of the mayor of New York, Simon Schuyler, a balding, owlish man with spectacles, whose appearance belied an interior of slick and utterly lethal political genius. He was scheduled to give a short speech at dinner, and he looked the part. He was standing next to a brunet who was so well put together she could only have been a politician’s wife.

  “Nora, my dear, you know Mayor Schuyler, of course,” Menzies said. “And this is Mrs. Schuyler. Simon, this is Dr. Nora Kelly, head curator of the Tomb of Senef and one of our most brilliant and interesting young scientists. And this is Dr. Viola Maskelene, the formidable British Egyptologist.”

  “I’m delighted to meet you,” said Schuyler, eyeing Viola with interest through his thick lenses, then transferring that interest to Nora and back again, highly approving. “Marvelous talk you gave, Ms. Maskelene, especially that part about weighing the heart after death. I’m dreadfully afraid my heart has gotten rather heavy these last few years, thanks to New York City politics.” He laughed merrily and Nora and Viola dutifully laughed along with him, joined by Menzies. Schuyler was known for his huge appreciation of his own wit, an appreciation not shared by many of his acquaintances. Tonight he seemed in high good humor. Funny how, just six weeks ago, he’d been calling for Collopy’s resignation. So it was in big-city politics.

  “Nora,” said Menzies, “the mayor and his wife would love to have you and Dr. Maskelene accompany them in the tomb.”

  “Delighted,” said Viola, smiling.

  Nora nodded. “It would be our pleasure.” It was standard museum practice, she knew, for VIP guests at openings to get museum staff as private tour guides. And while Mayor Schuyler was not the highest-ranking politician at the opening, he was the most important, holder of the museum’s purse strings, who had been loudest in decrying the destruction of the diamonds.

  “Yes, how lovely,” said his wife, who seemed less than enthusiastic about being escorted by two such attractive guides.

  Menzies bustled off. Nora watched as he paired up the governor with the museum’s associate director, a New York senator with George Ashton, and various VIPs with other staff to ensure that everyone felt special.

  “That fellow’s a regular matchmaker,” said the mayor, following him with his eyes, chuckling. “I could use him on my staff.” The hall’s warm overhead lighting shone off his bald pate, illuminating it like a billiard ball.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, may I have your attention!” came the rich, aristocratic voice of Frederick Watson Collopy, the museum’s director, who had positioned himself in front of the tomb doors, wielding the same tiresome pair of gigantic scissors that were trotted out at every opening. With a little help from an assistant, he got them positioned and ready to cut.

  The tympanist in the small orchestra let fly a tolerable drumroll.

  “I hereby officially reopen, after more than half a century of darkness, the Grand Tomb of Senef!”

  With a mighty heave, Collopy shut the scissors, and the two ends of the cut ribbon fluttered to the floor. With a rumble, the faux stone doors slid open. The orchestra immediately sounded the famous theme of Aïda once again and those in the crowd with passes to the first of the two shows surged toward the dimly lit rectangle of darkness.

  The mayor’s wife shivered. “I don’t like tombs. Is it really three thousand years old?”

  “Three thousand three hundred and eighty,” said Viola.

  “My goodness, you know so much!” said Mrs. Schuyler, turning to her.

  “We Egyptologists are veritable founts of useless knowledge.”

  The mayor chuckled at this.

  “Is it true what they say, that it’s cursed?” Mrs. Schuyler went on.

  “In a manner of speaking,” said Viola. “Many Egyptian tombs had inscriptions that threatened harm to those who disturbed them. This one has a stronger curse than most—but that’s probably because Senef wasn’t a pharaoh.”

  “Oh, dear, I hope nothing happens to us. Who was this Senef?”

  “They don’t really know—probably the uncle of Thutmosis IV. Thutmosis became pharaoh at age six, and Senef acted as regent while Thutmosis grew up.”

  “Thutmosis? You mean King Tut?”

  “Oh, no,” said Viola. “Tut was Tutankhamen, another pharaoh—far less important than Thutmosis.”

  “I get so confused,” said the wife. />
  They passed through the doors, into the sloping corridor.

  “Watch your step, dear,” said the mayor.

  “This is the God’s First Passage,” said Viola, and launched into a brief description of the tomb’s layout. As she listened, Nora recalled the enthusiastic tour Wicherly had given only a few weeks before. Despite the warmth, she shivered.

  They moved forward slowly toward the first stop on the sound-and-light show, hemmed in on all sides by the crowd. In a few minutes, the three hundred guests were all inside and she heard the rumble as the tomb doors closed, ending with a hollow clang. A sudden silence fell on the crowd and the lights dimmed even further.

  Out of the darkness came the faint sound of a shovel digging in sand. Then another—and then a chorus of picks, all striking the soil. Then came the furtive voices of the tomb robbers, speaking in tense, muffled tones. Nora glanced over and saw, in the far corner, the PBS camera crew filming.

  The sound-and-light show had begun, and millions were watching.

  56

  Hayward arrived in the hall just behind D’Agosta, stepping into a blaze of light and color. To her dismay, she saw that the doors to the Tomb of Senef were closed, the decorative red ribbon lying cut on the floor. The most important guests were already inside, while the others were scattered about the hall, seated at cocktail tables or clustered in knots by the food and liquor.

  “We’ve got to get those doors open—now,” said Pendergast, coming up beside her.

  “The computer control room is this way.”

  They ran across the hall—receiving startled glances from some of the guests—and burst through a door at the far end.

  The computer control room for the Tomb of Senef was small. At one end was a long table on which stood several computer monitors and keyboards. On either side rose up racks of equipment: hard drives, controllers, synthesizers, video equipment. A muted television was tuned to the local PBS affiliate, currently simulcasting the opening. Two technicians sat at the table, observing a brace of monitors displaying video feeds from inside the tomb, as well as a third monitor, on which scrolled a long series of numbers. They turned, surprised at the sudden entry.

  “What’s the status of the sound-and-light show?” Hayward asked.

  “Going like clockwork,” said one of the technicians. “Why?”

  “Shut it down,” Hayward said. “Open the tomb doors.”

  The technician removed a pair of earphones. “I can’t do that without authorization.”

  Hayward stuck her badge in his face. “Captain Hayward, NYPD Homicide. How’s that?”

  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 . . .”

  57

  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.