The Third Gate

21

Porter Stone’s private office, at the end of one of the interior corridors of White, was a small but highly functional space. There was no power desk, no framed magazine covers sporting his image. Instead, there was a single round table surrounded by a half-dozen chairs; a few laptops; a shortwave radio. A single shelf held several books on Egyptology and the history of the dynastic line. There were no artifacts, grave goods, or decorations of any kind. The only thing on the wall was a single page displaying the current month, ripped roughly from a calendar and taped behind the conference table, as if to underscore the time pressure they were under.

Stone waved Logan toward the table. “Have a seat. Would you care for coffee, tea, mineral water?”

“I’m fine, thank you,” Logan said as he sat down.

Stone nodded, then took a seat across the table. For a moment he regarded Logan with his pale blue eyes, so prominent in the tanned face. “I wonder if you’d care to clarify what you said, back there in the machine shop.”

“I’ve been studying Narmer’s curse-and how it compares to other ancient Egyptian curses. It led me to think about something.”

Stone nodded. “Go on.”

“Many pharaohs owned priceless treasures-probably much more valuable than those of Narmer, who after all was a very early ruler. And yet none of them took anywhere near the trouble Narmer did to hide himself and his possessions. Certainly, they built pyramids in Giza, they built tombs in the Valley of the Kings-but they didn’t have themselves buried beyond their borders, in potentially hostile countries, hundreds of miles from their seats of power. They didn’t build false tombs to throw would-be looters off the scent. And Narmer’s curse, as dreadful as it is, is unusual: it doesn’t mention riches and gold. It all makes me wonder: Did Narmer have some other, overbearing concern, beyond merely keeping his valuables close?”

Stone had listened without moving. “Are you implying that, even more than his descendants, Narmer couldn’t risk having his sarcophagus defiled? He’d unified Egypt, but it was still a shaky unification; he couldn’t allow his tomb to be ransacked and his dynasty threatened?”

“That’s part of it. But not all. The incredible lengths he went to keep his tomb a secret-to me, it seems the work of a man who was protecting something, hiding something-something that was as valuable to him as life, or afterlife, itself. Something whose absence, in fact, might jeopardize the afterlife.”

For a moment, Stone simply looked at Logan. And then his face broke into a smile, and he laughed. Watching him, Logan had the distinct impression that he had just been tested-and had passed.

“Damn it, Jeremy-may I call you Jeremy? — this is the second time you’ve surprised me. I like the way your mind works. Sometimes I believe my specialists are so good at what they do, at their own little spheres of knowledge, that they forget there are other ways of looking at things.” He leaned forward. “And, as it happens, I believe that you’re exactly right.”

He stood up, walked to the door, opened it, and leaned out, asking his secretary for coffee. Then he returned to the table and pulled something from the pocket of his suit.

“What-the arrowhead again?” Logan said.

“Hardly.” Stone palmed something to Logan. It was the ostracon he’d seen in the reading room of the Museum of Egyptian Antiquities.

“Do you remember this?” Stone asked. “The ostracon that once belonged to Flinders Petrie?”

“Of course.”

Stone placed it on the table. “You remember it contains four hieroglyphs?”

“I remember that you were coy about their meaning.”

A soft knock, and the secretary entered with Stone’s coffee. He took a sip, then turned back to Logan. “Well, I’m not going to be coy anymore. You’ve graduated to the inner circle.” He regarded his guest, his eyes dancing with the same private amusement Logan had noticed before. “You recall that Narmer was-according to most Egyptologists-the unifier of upper and lower Egypt?”

“Yes,” Logan said.

“And you recall that he wore the ‘double’ crown, representing the red and the white crowns of the two Egypts-the sacred relics of the unification?”

Logan nodded.

Stone let his gaze roam slowly around the office for a moment. “It’s a very curious thing, Jeremy. Did you know that no crown of an Egyptian pharaoh has ever been found-not one? Even King Tut’s tomb, which was discovered intact and unlooted, containing absolutely everything he needed to take with him on his journey to the next world, contained no crown.”

He let this fact settle in a moment before going on. “There are several theories why. One is that the crown had magical properties that somehow prevented it from passing into the next world. Another-more popular among scholars, naturally-is that there was never more than one such crown in existence, passed down from one king to the next: thus it was the one thing that couldn’t be taken on the journey to the underworld. But the fact is, nobody knows for sure why one has never been found.”

Stone picked up the disk again, turned it over in his hand. “What Petrie saw on this ostracon were four hieroglyphs dating from a very early period.” Extending a finger, Stone pointed to them in turn. “This first is a representation of the red crown of upper Egypt. The second is the white crown of lower Egypt. The third is a hieroglyph of a vault, or resting place. And the last is a primitive serekh containing Narmer’s name.”

In the silence that followed, Stone put the ostracon back on the table, inscription side down, and placed his coffee cup atop it.

Logan barely noticed. His mind was working quickly. “Do you mean to tell me…”

Stone nodded. “This ostracon is the key to the biggest-and I mean the biggest-archaeological secret in history. It’s why Petrie dropped everything and left his comfortable retirement to undertake a long, dangerous, and ultimately unsuccessful search. It tells us that King Narmer was buried with the original two crowns of Egypt: the white and the red.”