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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…”
Chapter 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.
As she moved with the crowd, Nora felt a shiver of pride. It was an excellent script-Wicherly had done a masterful job. For all his personal failings, he had been abundantly talented. She was also proud of her own creative contribution. Hugo Menzies had guided the overall project with a subtle and sure hand, while proving equally clever with the nuts and bolts of bringing the show together. The technicians and A/V crew had done a splendid job with the visuals. Judging from the mesmerized audience, so far it was going very well.
As the crowd walked down the corridor toward the well, following the video images of the tomb robbers, lights placed behind hidden panels flickered, simulating the effect of torchlight on the walls. The crowd flow was working perfectly, the audience automatically moving at the pace of the robbers.
At the well, the robbers paused, their voices raised in discussion of how to bridge the dangerous pit. Several of them carried thin tree trunks over their shoulders, which they proceeded to lash together. Using a crude pulley and winch system, they lowered the logs and swung them across the well to make a bridge. The projected images then inched across the swaying, creaking bridge as if on a tightrope. A cry rang out as one of the figures slipped from the bridge, plunging with a hideous scream into the darkness of the pit-cut off suddenly in a sickening smack of meat hitting stone. The audience gasped.
“Goodness,” said the mayor’s wife. “That was rather… realistic.”
Nora glanced around. Initially, she had been against that little piece of drama, but she had to admit that-judging by the excited murmurs and gasps of the audience-it had been effective. Even the mayor’s wife, despite her faint objection, seemed enthralled.
More invisible holographic screens now descended as others rose, and the computer-controlled video projectors seamlessly transferred the images of the robbers from one screen to the next, giving them the illusion of three-dimensional motion. The effect was extraordinarily real. And yet-the moment the last visitor left the tomb-the screens would all retract and the images of death and destruction would be cut off, leaving the hall in its original pristine shape and ready for the next performance.
The guests followed the holographic figures into the Hall of the Chariots. Here, the robbers fa
The Tomb of Senef, like many ancient Egyptian tombs, contained an inscription that cursed those who would despoil it. But an even greater deterrent than a curse was the robbers’ own terror of the power of the pharaoh. For these high priests, although greedy and corrupt, were also believers. They believed in the divinity of the pharaoh and in his everlasting life. They believed in the magical properties which had been invested in the objects buried in the tomb with him. The magic in these objects was extremely dangerous and would do the robbers great harm if it were not canceled.
For this reason, the first thing the robbers did was destroy all the grave goods in the tomb, as a way to expunge their magical powers.