The Pharaoh's Secret

11

Kurt, Joe and the other survivors from Lampedusa sat in the open air on the deck of an Italian supply ship with a big red cross on its funnel. They’d been evacuated by soldiers in full chemical gear, loaded aboard military helicopters and flown east. The operation went smoothly. The most difficult part was prying Joe off the MRI scanner, but as the metallic sections of his gear were cut away, they were able to pull him free.

After decontamination showers and a battery of medical tests, they were given new clothes in the form of spare military uniforms, put out on deck and offered the best espresso Kurt could remember drinking.

After a second cup, he found he literally could not sit still.

“You’ve got that look in your eye,” Joe said.

“Something’s bugging me.”

“It’s probably the caffeine,” Joe said. “You’ve had enough to give an elephant the jitters.”

Kurt glanced down at his empty cup and then back up at Joe. “Take a look around,” he said. “Tell me what you see.”

“Nothing better to do,” Joe replied. He glanced in every direction. “Blue skies, shimmering water. People happy to be alive. Though I’m sure you’ve spotted something to be glum about.”

“Exactly,” Kurt said. “I have. We’re all out here. Every one of the survivors. Everyone except the person I’m most interested in talking to: Dr. Ambrosini.”

“I got a fair look at her when we came on board,” Joe said, stirring some sugar into the coffee. “I don’t blame you for wanting to see her again. Who wouldn’t want to play doctor with that particular doctor?”

There was no denying how attractive she was, but Kurt wanted to speak with her for other reasons. “Believe it or not, I’m more interested in her mind.”

Joe raised an eyebrow and then casually took another sip of his coffee — a move that said, Sure you are.

“I’m serious,” Kurt insisted. “I have some questions I want to ask her.”

“Beginning with ‘What’s your number?’” Joe guessed. “Followed shortly by ‘Your cabin or mine?’”

Kurt couldn’t help but laugh. “No,” he insisted. “She said a few things when I first arrived at the operating room that seemed odd to me. She seemed to know something about the guy who tried to kill us. Not to mention the fact that she called the incident an attack right from the beginning, right from that radio call we intercepted.”

Joe offered a more calculating look. “What are you getting at?”

Kurt shrugged as if it were obvious. “A freighter burning offshore, dark smoke drifting over the island, people falling down dead because of it: that’s a disaster. An accident. I’d even call it a catastrophe. But an attack?”

“Those are strong words,” Joe said.

“As strong as this coffee,” Kurt said.

Joe gazed out into the distance. “I think I see where you’re going with this. And while I normally like to be the voice of reason, I’ve been wondering how she knew enough to gather a bunch of people together and seal off an entire room quickly enough to avoid the fate of everyone else in the hospital. Even for a doctor, that’s an awfully fast response.”

Kurt nodded. “But it’s the kind of response someone expecting trouble might’ve already had in mind.”

“A contingency plan.”

“Or standard operating procedure.”

Kurt looked around. They were being watched by a trio of Italian sailors. It was a cursory honor guard of sorts and the sailors didn’t seem all that interested in the duty. Two of them were leaning against the rail, talking quietly to each other, at the far edge of the deck. The third guard stood closer, smoking a cigarette, beside a small mechanical crane. “Think you can distract the guards?”

“Only if you promise to sneak past them, stir things up and get us into so much trouble that they decide to throw us off the boat,” Joe said.

Kurt raised a hand as if he were taking an oath. “I solemnly swear.”

“All right, then,” Joe said, finishing the rest of his coffee. “Here we go.”

As Kurt watched, Joe stood up and sauntered over toward the third chaperone, the only one near enough to actually matter. A conversation was quickly struck up, complete with Joe making hand gestures to keep the guard’s eyes busy.

Kurt stood and made his way forward, easing back into the shadows beside a closed hatchway and leaning against the bulkhead. When Joe pointed toward something high up in the superstructure, the guard tilted his head and squinted into the sunlight as Kurt pulled the hatch open, slipped inside and closed it silently behind him.

Fortunately, the passageway was empty. It didn’t surprise him. The supply ship was a large vessel, six hundred feet long, mostly empty space and probably crewed by less than two hundred men. Most of the passageways would be empty; the real challenge was to find the one that would take him to the infirmary, where he suspected Dr. Ambrosini would be found.

He started down the hall, heading toward the bow, where the decontamination procedures and testing had been performed. The sick bay had to be close by. If he found it, he’d knock on the door, fake a sore throat or maybe appendicitis. Something he hadn’t done since trying to get out of school in the eighth grade.

He grabbed a small box of parts that had been left outside the machine shop. Years in the Navy and traveling around the world with NUMA had taught him many things, one of which was that if you didn’t want anyone to stop and chat, walk briskly, avoid eye contact and, if at all possible, carry something that looks like it needs to be delivered ASAP.

The tactic worked like a charm as he passed a group of sailors without receiving a second glance. They disappeared behind him just as Kurt found a stairwell and dropped down one level, before continuing forward.

Things were going fine until he realized he was lost. Instead of the medical center, he was finding only storerooms and locked compartments.

“Some explorer you are,” he muttered to himself. As he tried to figure out which way to go, a man and woman in white lab coats shuffled down the stairs, talking quietly between themselves.

Kurt let them pass and then followed. “First rule of being lost,” he told himself. “Follow someone who seems to know where they’re going.”

He trailed them down two more flights of stairs and along another gangway until they disappeared through a hatch that closed softly behind them.

Kurt eased up beside it. He saw nothing on the door that suggested it was anything other than another storeroom, but when he opened the door a fraction and peeked through, he discovered how wrong he was.

A cavernous room spread out before him, lit from above by stark-white lights. It looked like a cargo bay, but it was empty except for hundreds and hundreds of bodies lying in cots or on mats laid down on the cold steel floor. Some wore bathing suits, as if they’d been collected from the beach, others were in casual shorts and T-shirts, and still others were in more official-looking clothes, including gray scrubs that matched those Kurt had seen on the staff at the hospital. None of them were moving.

Kurt pulled the door open wider and stepped through, moving toward this mass of people. It was not their presence here that surprised him — after all, someone had to collect the dead and helicopters had been taking off and landing all day long. It was the fact that many of the victims were now attached to electrodes, monitors and other instruments. Some had IVs hooked up to them, and still others were being poked and prodded by the medical staff.

One figure went into spasms as a technician jabbed him with electricity and then became still as the current was shut off.

For a moment, no one noticed Kurt — after all, he was dressed like a crewman and they were too busy doing whatever it was they were doing. But as he moved into the room and recognized Cody Williams and two other members of the NUMA team, Kurt gave himself away. One of them was being injected with something even as a set of electrodes was pulled from his head. Cody was being given the shock treatment.

“What the hell is going on here!?” Kurt shouted.

A dozen faces turned his way. Suddenly, everyone knew he didn’t belong. “Who are you?” one of them asked.

“Who the hell are you?” Kurt demanded. “And what kind of sick experiments are you doing on these people?”

Kurt’s booming voice rang through the cavernous hold. His angry demeanor shocked the medical personnel. A few of them muttered to each other in whispered tones. Someone said something that sounded German to him, while still another shouted for Security.

Instantly, a group of Italian military police appeared. They moved toward him from two sides.

“Whoever you are, you’re not authorized to be here,” one of the doctors said. His English was accented, but not in Italian; he sounded French to Kurt.

“Get him out of here,” another one said. To Kurt’s surprise, this doctor sounded as if he came from Kansas or Iowa.

Despite the warning, Kurt stepped forward, moving toward the NUMA personnel who appeared to be being experimented on. He wanted to see what they were doing to his people and put a stop to it. The MPs cut him off. Batons in hand. Tasers on their hips.

“Throw him in the brig,” another doctor grunted. “And, for goodness’ sake, secure the rest of the ship. How in blazes are we supposed to work like this?”

Before Kurt could be dragged away, a female voice intervened. “Do you really think it’s necessary to clap our hero in irons and bury him in the depths of the hold?”

The words were English but Italian-accented and spoken with just the right mix of authority and sarcasm to ensure they would be obeyed. They came from Dr. Ambrosini, who was now standing on a catwalk above them.

With the grace of a dancer, she came down a ladder and across the cargo bay to where Kurt and the MPs stood face-to-face.

“But Dr. Ambrosini…” one of the foreign medics protested.

“But nothing, Dr. Ravishaw. He saved my life, the lives of eighteen others, and he’s given us the best clue to the origin of this problem since the beginning of our investigation.”

“This is highly irregular,” Dr. Ravishaw said.

“Yes,” she replied, “as a matter of fact it is.”

Kurt took some pleasure in the exchange and noted wryly that Dr. Ambrosini was the smallest person in the room but undeniably in charge. She seemed genuinely pleased to see Kurt, yet a few smiles and kind treatment weren’t enough to defuse his anger. “You want to tell me what’s going on here?”

“Can we talk in private?”

“I’d love to,” he said. “Lead on.”

Dr. Ambrosini made her way to a small office next to the cargo hold. Kurt followed and shut the door after he stepped through it. By the look of it, the office was normally meant for a quartermaster, but it had clearly been co-opted by the medical personnel.

“First off,” she began, “I want to thank you for saving me.”

“Looks like you just returned the favor.”

She laughed it off, brushed a strand of hair back from her face and tucked it behind her ear. “I highly doubt I’ve saved you from anything,” she said. “More likely, I saved those poor MPs from a painful scuffle that would have bruised their egos, at the very least.”

“I think you overestimate me,” Kurt said.

“I doubt that,” she replied, folding her arms in front of her chest and leaning against the edge of the desk.

It was a nice compliment. Probably half true, but Kurt wasn’t here to exchange pleasantries. “Can we get to the part where you tell me why those quacks out there are doing experiments on my dead friends?”

“Those quacks are my friends,” she said defensively.

“At least they’re alive.”

She took a deep breath, as if deciding how much to say, and then exhaled. “Yes,” she said. “Well, I understand why you’re upset. Your friends, like everyone on the island, have suffered quite a bit. But we need to find out—”

“What kind of toxin killed them?” Kurt said, interrupting. “I think that’s a great idea. Unless I’m mistaken, that’s done through blood tests and tissue samples. And while you’re at it, maybe someone should be testing the smoke coming from that freighter. But unless you can tell me something I’m missing, there’s no need for the Dr. Frankenstein treatment I just saw out there.”

“Dr. Frankenstein treatment,” she repeated. “That’s a surprisingly apt description of what they’re trying to do.”

Kurt was confused. “And why is that?”

“Because,” she said, “we’re trying to bring your friends and the rest of them back to life.”