The Third Gate

48

As the rest of the group watched in rapt silence, Stone stepped up to the large onyx chest. Valentino’s roustabouts came up to stand on either side of him. Stone hesitated briefly, then knelt before the plinth and let one latex-gloved hand brush gently across the upper surface of the chest. His shoulders trembled visibly. He pulled the gloves from his hands-Rush, Logan noted, made no protest at this-and caressed the chest once again. Despite what he’d implied about the chest holding the answer to all Narmer’s secrets, Stone seemed to be in no hurry to open it.

Standing back in the darkness, watching, Logan understood. He remembered the speech Stone had given to the assembled troops, describing his first archaeological discovery: the Native American settlement everyone else had missed. He remembered the gleam in Stone’s eye when he’d first met him, disguised as an elderly local researcher, that day in the Cairo museum when he’d said: work quickly. Over his illustrious career, Stone had uncovered almost incontrovertible evidence of the existence of Camelot. He’d recovered traces of Hippolyta, queen of the Amazons, whom historians had always consigned to myth. And yet in discovering the tomb of Narmer, he had outdone even himself. Logan knew that Stone held Flinders Petrie, father of modern archaeology, with a respect that bordered on reverence. And yet now Stone had accomplished what had eluded even Petrie. With the discovery of Narmer’s crown, he would take his place in the highest circle of his profession-a circle reserved for one. His detractors would be forever silenced. Stone would become, for all time, the world’s greatest archaeologist.

Silently, Stone ran his hands around the top of the chest, then along its sides, his spidery fingers moving this way and that, almost like a phrenologist analyzing a skull. “Tina,” he said at last, his voice breaking the silence, “a scalpel, please.”

Tina moved forward and handed Stone the thin, straight blade. He nodded his thanks, then gently applied the scalpel to the strips of gold that lined the chest. Logan had assumed these strips to be mere inlaid decoration; instead, they appeared to be bands of precious metal holding the chest closed by ritual seals. Having cut through them, Stone peeled the bands away from the chest, then laid them carefully aside. A single band of gold remained, holding the elaborately bejeweled serekh in place on the chest’s upper surface; another careful notch of the scalpel cut through this as well, and Stone gently placed both it and its attached serekh by the base of the plinth. Then he rose and nodded to the roustabouts. The two positioned themselves on each side of the chest. At Stone’s direction, each grasped an edge of the lid and began to lift it. Although the lid could not have been more than two inches thick, the roustabouts could barely budge it from its position; Valentino and one of the security guards came forward to lend a hand. With great effort, the four raised the lid from the chest, moved it to an uncluttered area of the tomb, and-with a chorus of grunts-laid it on the floor. It hit the black surface with a dull thud that reverberated throughout chamber three.

Inside the large onyx chest was a black cloth shot through with threads the color of gold. Stone touched it gingerly but-as before-the moment his fingers made contact, the cloth disappeared into a mist of fine dust, its corporeal form preserved five millennia only through a caprice of nature.

Below lay a sheet of beaten gold, covered with primitive hieroglyphs.

“Tina?” Stone asked, angling one of the lights toward the sheet of gold. “What do you make of these?”

Romero came forward, examined the glyphs. “They seem to refer to those papyri, laid out on the table,” she said after a moment. “I’d only begun to study them. It’s almost as if they were…”

“Were what?” Rush prompted.

“Invocations. But not of the usual type.”

“ What type?” Stone said, an edge of impatience in his voice.

She shrugged. “Almost like-instructions.”

“Why is that unusual?” Stone asked. “The entire New Kingdom’s Book of the Dead could be seen as an instruction manual.”

Romero didn’t answer.

Stone turned back to the chest. Nodding for Valentino’s men to remove the sheet of beaten gold, he eagerly glanced beneath, angling the light in closer for a better look. Stepping forward, Logan could see another sheet of precious metal-this one edged with faience and precious gems, its surface dense with hieroglyphs-once again covering the entire upper surface of the chest. Stone gestured for the roustabouts to remove it as well.

“Over here, please,” Romero said. She instructed Valentino’s men to place both inserts on the floor near the table with the papyri.

With the second sheet of gold removed, a rough, uneven surface greeted their eyes. To Logan, looking down into the chest through the dim light, the chest appeared to be filled with a superfluity of small, thin, desiccated bones, all jumbled about and knotted together in a crazy quilt of disarray.

Stone grunted in surprise. He reached forward; thought better of it; donned another latex glove, and then dipped a hand into the material.

“What is all that?” Logan asked.

“I’ll be damned,” Stone replied after a minute. “It’s hemp.”

Rush leaned forward, plucked a piece from the jumble with a pair of forceps, examined it with his flashlight. “You’re right.”

Nodding to Valentino’s men, Stone began removing handfuls of the ancient plant stalks from the chest-first gingerly, then in larger and larger amounts, until it littered the floor of chamber three. As the material was disturbed, thin clouds of organic dust rose, and an odd scent-like that of a five-thousand-year-old harvest-rose to Logan’s nostrils.

Embedded within the bundles of hemp were two bags, each slightly larger than a basketball, formed from strands of gold so tightly and expertly woven that they were as pliable as silk. Gently-gently-Stone freed them from the surrounding hemp and placed them on the floor before the plinth.

Once again, without speaking, the group closed in. Logan looked at the two roundish objects gleaming in the beams of a half-dozen flashlights. In his mind’s eye, he saw within them the twin crowns of Egypt: the white, conical crown of upper Egypt, spotless and gleaming; the red crown of lower Egypt, high peaked and aggressive. What were they made of? Painted gold? Some unknown or unexpected alloy? What magic did they wield? He felt almost beside himself with eagerness to see what was inside those soft folds of woven gold. Two bundles. There was no longer any question: these were the double crowns of the first pharaoh of Egypt. What else would Narmer have guarded so jealously, so carefully, and at such great cost-not only to himself but to his legacy?

Stone appeared seized with a similar urgency. He picked up one of the golden bags, loosened its end, and-with a brief look around at the others-reached in and gently pulled out its contents.

What emerged was not a crown but something very different: a bowl-shaped implement, made apparently of white marble, trailing long gold filaments from its edge.

There was a murmur of surprise and dismay from the onlookers.

Stone frowned. He stared at the thing for a moment, uncomprehending, and then placed it aside atop its golden bag and-more quickly this time-thrust his hand into the second.

What he pulled out of this bag was even stranger: a construction of red enamel, topped by an iron rod that itself was surrounded by a curled sheet of copper. Logan, stunned, leaned forward, peering closely. The iron rod leading away from the enamel construction was sealed with a stopper of what appeared to be bitumen. They looked precisely like the images in the wall painting in chamber one.

These were not crowns. These could be called nothing else but — devices.

Stone stared blankly at the red-colored thing in his right hand. Then he picked up the white marble object in his left. As the group watched in silence, he looked from one, to the other, and then back again.

“What the hell?” he croaked.