The Book of the Dead (33 page)

D
r. Adrian Wicherly walked through the deserted Egyptian gallery, feeling a certain smug satisfaction at the special assignment Menzies had charged him with—him, and not Nora Kelly. He flushed at the thought of the way she had led him on and then humiliated him; he had heard that American women liked to burst one’s bollocks, and now he’d had a taste of it, good and proper. The woman was as common as muck.

Well, he would be back in London soon enough, his C.V. nicely buffed up from this plum little assignment. His thoughts strayed to all the young, eager docents who volunteered at the British Museum—they had already proved to be delightfully flexible in their thinking. A pox on American women and their hypocritical puritanical moralism.

On top of that, Nora Kelly was bossy. Although he was the Egyptologist, she had never relinquished the riding crop; she had always remained firmly in charge. Although he had been hired to write the script for the sound-and-light extravaganza, she had insisted on proofreading it, making changes, and in general making a bloody nuisance of herself. What was she doing working in a big museum, anyway, when she really should be tucked away in some semidetached house in the suburbs with a pack of squalling brats? Who was this husband she was allegedly so loyal to? Maybe the problem was she was rogering someone on the side
already
. Yes, that was probably it…

Wicherly arrived at the annex and paused. It was very late—Menzies had been quite insistent on the time—and the museum was almost unnaturally silent. He listened to that silence. There were some sounds—but what, exactly, he couldn’t say. A faint sighing somewhere of… what? Forced-air ducts? And then a slow, methodical ticking:
tick… tick… tick…
every two or three seconds, like a moribund clock. There were also faint thumps and groans, which could be ducts or something to do with the museum’s mechanical systems.

Wicherly smoothed down his thatch of hair, glancing around nervously. They had caught the killer the day before and there was nothing to worry about. Nothing. Strange, though, what had happened to Lipper… typical smart-arsed New Yorker, one wouldn’t have thought he would snap like that. Well, they were all a little tense. These Americans worked themselves half to death—he couldn’t believe the hours they worked. Back at the British Museum, such demands would be looked on as downright uncivilized, if not illegal. Look at him now, for example: three o’clock in the bloody morning. Of course, given the nature of Menzies’s assignment, it was understandable.

Wicherly swiped his card through the reader attached to the wall, punched in his code, and the gleaming new stainless-steel doors to the Tomb of Senef opened with a whisper of well-machined metal. The tomb exhaled the scent of dry stone, epoxy glue, dust, and warm electronics. The lights came up automatically. Nothing had been left to chance; everything was now fully programmed. A backup tech to succeed poor Lipper had already reported for duty, but so far had proved superfluous. The grand opening was only five days away, and although the tomb’s collections were only partially installed, the lighting, electronics, and the sound-and-light show were ready to go.

Still, Wicherly hesitated. His eye strayed down the long, sloping staircase to the corridor beyond. He felt a small tingle of apprehension. Trying to shake it off, he stepped inside and walked down the stairs, his oxfords making a
chuff-chuff
sound on the worn stones.

At the first door, he paused, almost against his will, glance arrested by the great Eye of Horus and the hieroglyphs below.
To any who cross this threshold, may Ammut swallow his heart
. It was a standard enough curse; he had entered a hundred tombs under a similar threat, and never once had it put the wind up him. But the image of Ammut on the far wall was unusually hideous. And then, there was the strange, dark history of the tomb, not to mention the business with Lipper…

The ancient Egyptians believed in the magical powers of the incantations and images written on tomb walls, especially in the Book of the Dead. These were not mere decoration: they had a power against which the living were helpless. In studying Egypt for so long, in learning to read hieroglyphics fluently, in immersing himself in their ancient beliefs, Wicherly had come to half believe them himself. Of course, they were all rubbish, but at one level he understood them so thoroughly they almost seemed real.

And never had they seemed more real than at that moment: especially the squatting, grotesque form of Ammut, its slavering crocodile jaws open and glistening, the scaly head morphing into a leopard’s spotted body, which in turn segued into the hindquarters of a hippo. Those hindquarters were the most vile of all: a bloated, slimy, misshapen fundament spreading over the ground. All three animals, Wicherly knew, were common killers of people during the time of the pharaohs, and greatly feared. A monstrous amalgamation of all three was the worst creature the ancient Egyptians could imagine.

Shaking his head and forcing a rueful chuckle, Wicherly walked on. He was letting himself get spooked by his own erudition, by all the ridiculous talk and silly rumors circulating through the museum. After all, this was not some tomb lost in the wastes of the Upper Nile: one of the biggest, most modern cities in the world was sitting right on top of him. Even as he stood there, he heard the distant, muffled rumble of a late-night subway. It annoyed him: despite all their efforts, they had been unable to block out totally the sound of the Central Park West subway.

He crossed the well and glanced up at the dense script from the Book of the Dead, his eye arrested by the odd inscription that he had so cavalierly dismissed during his first visit:

The place which is sealed. That which lieth down in the closed place is reborn by the Ba-soul which is in it; that which walketh in the closed space is dispossessed of the Ba-soul. By the Eye of Horus I am delivered or damned, O great god Osiris.

Like many inscriptions from the Book of the Dead, it was well-nigh opaque. But as he read it a second time, a glimmer of understanding came to him. The ancients believed people had five distinct souls. The Ba-soul was the ineffable power and personality each person possessed: this soul flew back and forth between the tomb and the underworld, and it was the means by which the deceased kept in touch with the underworld. But the Ba-soul had to reunite with the mummified corpse every night, or the deceased would die again: this time permanently.

The passage, it seemed to Wicherly, implied that those who invaded the place which was sealed—the tomb—would be deprived of their Ba-soul and thus damned by the Eye of Horus. In ancient Egypt, the insane were considered to be people who had somehow lost their Ba-soul. In other words, those who defiled the tomb would be driven insane.

Wicherly shivered. Isn’t that just what had happened to that poor bugger Lipper?

Suddenly he found himself laughing out loud, his voice echoing unpleasantly in the close confines of the tomb. What was the matter with him? He was becoming as superstitious as a bloody Irishman. He gave his head another, more vigorous shake and proceeded into the inner tomb. He had work to do. He had a special errand to run for Dr. Menzies.

N
ora unlocked her office door, laid her laptop and mail on the desk, then shrugged out of her coat and hung it up. It was a cold, sunny late-March morning, and yellow light streamed in the window, making an almost horizontal bar of gold light, raking the spines of the books crowding the shelves along the opposite wall.

Four more days until the opening, she thought with satisfaction, and then she could get back to her potsherds—and her husband, Bill. Because of her long hours at the museum, their lovemaking had been so scarce of late he’d even stopped bothering to complain.
Four more days
. It had been a long, stressful haul—and bizarre even by museum standards—but it was almost over. And who knew? The opening might actually be fun. She’d be taking Bill, and she knew how much he liked a good gorge—and the museum, for all its shortcomings, knew how to throw a party.

She settled at her desk and had just begun slitting open the letters when a knock sounded at the door.

“Come in,” she said, wondering who else would be in so early—it was barely eight o’clock.

The avuncular form of Menzies appeared in the doorway, his blue eyes worried, his brow furrowed with concern.

“May I?” he asked, gesturing at the guest chair.

“Please.”

He came in and sat down, folding one leg over the other and tugging at the crease in his herringbone slacks. “You haven’t seen Adrian, have you?”

“No. But it’s very early, he probably isn’t in yet.”

“That’s just the thing. He did come in: at three this morning. Checked in through security and accessed the tomb, according to the electronic security logs. Then he left the tomb at three-thirty, locked it up tight. Strange thing is, he didn’t leave the museum—he hasn’t checked out. Security shows him as still on the premises, but he’s not in his office or lab. In fact, I can’t find him anywhere. I thought perhaps he might have said something to you.”

“No, nothing. Do you know why he came in at three?”

“He might have wanted to get a head start on the day: as you know, we have to start moving in the final artifacts at nine. I’ve got the carpenters, the Exhibition Department, and the conservation staff all mobilized. But no Adrian. I can’t believe he would just vanish like this.”

“He’ll show up. He’s always been reliable.”

“I should hope so.”

“I should hope so, too,” came another voice.

Nora glanced up, startled. Wicherly stood in the doorway, looking at her.

Menzies seemed startled himself and then smiled with relief. “There you are! I was starting to get worried.”

“No need to worry about me.”

Menzies rose. “Well then, much ado about nothing. Adrian, I’d like to have a chat with you in my office about the artifact placements. We have a big day ahead of us.”

“Mind if I have a word with Nora first? I’ll see you in a few minutes.”

“Fine.” Menzies left and shut the door behind him.

Wicherly sat himself down, uninvited, in the wing chair Menzies had just vacated. Nora felt a twitch of annoyance. She hoped he wasn’t going to repeat his asinine behavior of the previous week.

When he spoke again, his voice was laced with sarcasm. “Worrying that I might try to slip something unwelcome into your knickers?”

“Adrian, I don’t have time for this. I’ve got a busy day ahead of me, and so do you. Give it a rest.”

“Not after your abominable behavior.”

“
My
behavior?” Nora took a breath: this was not the time to get into it. “The door is over there. Please use it.”

“Not until we settle this thing.”

Nora looked at Wicherly more closely, feeling a twinge of alarm. She was suddenly struck by how tired he looked—wiped out, even. His face was white; gray pouches had formed under his blue eyes; and his hair was damp and disordered. Most surprising of all, his suit and tie, always immaculate, looked untidy, even disheveled. Beads of sweat stood on his brow.