The Book of the Dead (51 page)

“The name of the count?”

“Thierry de Cahors.”

“Did anyone actually meet this count?”

“I wouldn’t know.”

When Pendergast lapsed back into silence, she continued. “Over the past six weeks, there’ve been two deaths associated with the reopening of the tomb, supposedly unconnected with each other. The first was a computer technician working inside the tomb, killed by his partner. The guy went crazy, murdered his pal, stuffed his organs into nearby ceremonial jars, and fled to the museum attics. Attacked a guard when they tried to flush him out. The second death was a curator named Wicherly, a Brit brought in specially to curate the show. He went nuts, tried to strangle Nora Kelly—you know her, Vinnie, right?”

“She all right?”

“She’s fine—in fact, she’s handling the opening tonight. Wicherly, on the other hand, was shot and killed by a panicked museum guard during the attack on Kelly. Now here’s the kicker: autopsies showed both aggressors suffered the exact same kind of brain damage.”

D’Agosta looked over at her.
“What?”

“Both were working in the tomb just before they went psycho. But we went over everything with a fine-tooth comb, found nothing—no environmental or other cause. As I said, the official line is that the two deaths are unconnected. But I’m not buying the coincidence. Diogenes is planning something—I’ve felt it all evening. And when I saw her at the opening, I knew I was right.”

“Who?” Pendergast murmured.

“Viola Maskelene.”

Hayward sensed a sudden stillness behind her.

“Did you inquire as to how she happened to be there?” came the very cool voice from the backseat.

Hayward swerved around a lumbering garbage truck. “She was hired by the museum at the last minute to replace Wicherly.”

“Hired by whom?”

“The head of the Anthropology Department. Menzies. Hugo Menzies.”

Another pause, much briefer, before Pendergast spoke again. “Tell me, Captain, what’s the program for this evening?”

Pendergast seemed, in a way, to be waking up.

“Hors d’oeuvres and cocktails, seven to eight. The ribbon cutting and opening of the tomb, eight to nine. Dinner at nine-thirty.”

“Opening of the tomb—I assume that includes a tour?”

“A tour with a sound-and-light show. Nationally televised.”

“A
sound-and-light
show?”

“Yes.”

Pendergast’s voice—which had been so hollow and remote—was now laced with urgency. “For God’s sake, Captain,
hurry!”

Hayward shot between two cabs that were stubbornly refusing to let her pass, clipping one bumper in the process. Glancing in the rearview mirror, she saw it fly upward, bouncing and flipping in a shower of sparks.

“What am I missing here?” D’Agosta asked.

“Captain Hayward is right,” Pendergast said. “This is it—the ‘perfect crime’ Diogenes boasted about.”

“Are you sure?”

“Listen carefully,” Pendergast said. He hesitated briefly. “I will only speak of this once. A wrong was done to my brother, many years ago. He was exposed—inadvertently, but exposed nevertheless—to a sadistic device. It was a ‘house of pain,’ its sole purpose to drive its victim insane or kill him from sheer fright. And now Diogenes—in the person of Menzies, whom he is no doubt posing as—will, through some hidden means of his own,
re-create
this at the opening tonight. Eli Glinn said it: Diogenes is motivated by a feeling of victimization. My brother wants to perpetrate the wrong done to him, but on a large scale. And, with a live television broadcast, the scale could be large indeed.
This
is what he has been building up to. All the rest was merely sideshow.”

He sank back in the rear seat and fell silent once again.

The car careened off the West Side Highway at the 79th Street exit ramp, then accelerated eastward toward the rear of the museum. In the distance ahead, all seemed calm—there were no flashing police lights, no hovering helicopters.

Maybe it hasn’t happened yet.

She tore right on Columbus, made the dogleg around 77th Street with a screeching of rubber, and flew onto Museum Drive, jamming on her brakes before a crush of idling limousines, taxis, and spectators. The squad car slewed sideways before the crowd and she leaped out, waving her badge, D’Agosta already in the lead, a one-man flying wedge.

“Captain Hayward, NYPD Homicide!” she cried. “Make way!”

The crowds parted in confusion, the slower ones scattered by D’Agosta, and in a moment they were at the velvet ropes. Without even pausing, D’Agosta knocked down a guard who had stepped in front of them. Hayward flashed her shield at the astonished police officers on duty and they sprinted up the carpeted steps toward the huge bronze doors of the museum.

N
ora Kelly stepped down from the podium into a sea of applause, enormously relieved that her short speech had gone well. She had been the last speaker, directly following George Ashton, the mayor, and Viola Maskelene, and now the main event was about to begin: the cutting of the ribbon and the opening of the Tomb of Senef.

Viola joined up with her. “Brilliant speech,” she said. “You were actually interesting.”

“As were you.”

She saw Hugo Menzies gesturing for them to come over. She pushed through the crowd, Viola following. Menzies’s face was florid, his blue eyes sparkling, his white tie and tails giving him the air of an impresario. His arm was linked with that of the mayor of New York, Simon Schuyler, a balding, owlish man with spectacles, whose appearance belied an interior of slick and utterly lethal political genius. He was scheduled to give a short speech at dinner, and he looked the part. He was standing next to a brunet who was so well put together she could only have been a politician’s wife.

“Nora, my dear, you know Mayor Schuyler, of course,” Menzies said. “And this is Mrs. Schuyler. Simon, this is Dr. Nora Kelly, head curator of the Tomb of Senef and one of our most brilliant and interesting young scientists. And this is Dr. Viola Maskelene, the formidable British Egyptologist.”

“I’m delighted to meet you,” said Schuyler, eyeing Viola with interest through his thick lenses, then transferring that interest to Nora and back again, highly approving. “Marvelous talk you gave, Ms. Maskelene, especially that part about weighing the heart after death. I’m dreadfully afraid my heart has gotten rather heavy these last few years, thanks to New York City politics.” He laughed merrily and Nora and Viola dutifully laughed along with him, joined by Menzies. Schuyler was known for his huge appreciation of his own wit, an appreciation not shared by many of his acquaintances. Tonight he seemed in high good humor. Funny how, just six weeks ago, he’d been calling for Collopy’s resignation. So it was in big-city politics.

“Nora,” said Menzies, “the mayor and his wife would love to have you and Dr. Maskelene accompany them in the tomb.”

“Delighted,” said Viola, smiling.

Nora nodded. “It would be our pleasure.” It was standard museum practice, she knew, for VIP guests at openings to get museum staff as private tour guides. And while Mayor Schuyler was not the highest-ranking politician at the opening, he was the most important, holder of the museum’s purse strings, who had been loudest in decrying the destruction of the diamonds.

“Yes, how lovely,” said his wife, who seemed less than enthusiastic about being escorted by two such attractive guides.

Menzies bustled off. Nora watched as he paired up the governor with the museum’s associate director, a New York senator with George Ashton, and various VIPs with other staff to ensure that everyone felt special.

“That fellow’s a regular matchmaker,” said the mayor, following him with his eyes, chuckling. “I could use him on my staff.” The hall’s warm overhead lighting shone off his bald pate, illuminating it like a billiard ball.

“Ladies and gentlemen, may I have your attention!” came the rich, aristocratic voice of Frederick Watson Collopy, the museum’s director, who had positioned himself in front of the tomb doors, wielding the same tiresome pair of gigantic scissors that were trotted out at every opening. With a little help from an assistant, he got them positioned and ready to cut.

The tympanist in the small orchestra let fly a tolerable drumroll.

“I hereby officially reopen, after more than half a century of darkness, the Grand Tomb of Senef!”

With a mighty heave, Collopy shut the scissors, and the two ends of the cut ribbon fluttered to the floor. With a rumble, the faux stone doors slid open. The orchestra immediately sounded the famous theme of
Aïda
once again and those in the crowd with passes to the first of the two shows surged toward the dimly lit rectangle of darkness.

The mayor’s wife shivered. “I don’t like tombs. Is it really three thousand years old?”

“Three thousand three hundred and eighty,” said Viola.

“My goodness, you know so much!” said Mrs. Schuyler, turning to her.

“We Egyptologists are veritable founts of useless knowledge.”

The mayor chuckled at this.

“Is it true what they say, that it’s cursed?” Mrs. Schuyler went on.

“In a manner of speaking,” said Viola. “Many Egyptian tombs had inscriptions that threatened harm to those who disturbed them. This one has a stronger curse than most—but that’s probably because Senef wasn’t a pharaoh.”

“Oh, dear, I hope nothing happens to us. Who was this Senef?”

“They don’t really know—probably the uncle of Thutmosis IV. Thutmosis became pharaoh at age six, and Senef acted as regent while Thutmosis grew up.”

“Thutmosis? You mean King Tut?”

“Oh, no,” said Viola. “Tut was Tutankhamen, another pharaoh—far less important than Thutmosis.”

“I get so
confused,”
said the wife.

They passed through the doors, into the sloping corridor.

“Watch your step, dear,” said the mayor.

“This is the God’s First Passage,” said Viola, and launched into a brief description of the tomb’s layout. As she listened, Nora recalled the enthusiastic tour Wicherly had given only a few weeks before. Despite the warmth, she shivered.

They moved forward slowly toward the first stop on the sound-and-light show, hemmed in on all sides by the crowd. In a few minutes, the three hundred guests were all inside and she heard the rumble as the tomb doors closed, ending with a hollow clang. A sudden silence fell on the crowd and the lights dimmed even further.

Out of the darkness came the faint sound of a shovel digging in sand. Then another—and then a chorus of picks, all striking the soil. Then came the furtive voices of the tomb robbers, speaking in tense, muffled tones. Nora glanced over and saw, in the far corner, the PBS camera crew filming.

The sound-and-light show had begun, and millions were watching.