The Book of the Dead (57 page)

“Yes, ma’am.”

They jumped the turnstiles, ran down the corridor, and entered the station proper. It was still early—not yet nine—and there were several dozen people waiting for the train. Hayward trotted along the platform, and D’Agosta followed. At the far end, a corridor branched off, with a large tiled sign above:

New York Museum of Natural History
Walkway to Entrance
Open During Museum Hours Only

An accordion grille of dingy, rusted metal sealed off the corridor, secured with a massive padlock.

“Better talk to those people,” murmured Hayward, pulling out her gun and pointing it at the lock.

D’Agosta nodded. He walked back along the platform, waving his shield. “NYPD! Clear the station! Everybody out!”

People looked over at him disinterestedly.

“Out! Police action, clear the station!”

The sound of two gunshots thundered down the platform, waking everyone up. They began to move back toward the exits, suddenly alarmed, and amidst the confused hubbub of the increasingly rapid retreat D’Agosta heard the words
terrorist
and
bomb
drifting toward him.

“I want everyone to leave in a calm and orderly fashion!” he called after them.

A third ripping gunshot cleared the station completely. D’Agosta ran back to find Hayward wrestling with the grille. He helped push it back and together they ducked through.

Ahead of them, the corridor stretched for a hundred yards before taking a sharp turn toward the museum’s subway entrance. Tilework along the walls showed images of mammal and dinosaur skeletons, and there were framed posters announcing upcoming museum exhibitions, including several for the Grand Tomb of Senef. Hayward pulled a small set of plans from her pocket and unrolled them on the cement floor. The plans were covered with scribbled notations—it looked to D’Agosta as if she had gone over them many times.

“That’s the tomb,” said Hayward, pointing at the map. “And there’s the subway tunnel. And look—right over here, there’s only about two feet of concrete between the corner of the tomb and this tunnel.”

D’Agosta squatted, examined the plat. “I don’t see any exact measurements on the subway side.”

“There aren’t any. They only surveyed the tomb, estimating the rest.”

D’Agosta frowned. “The scale is ten feet to the inch. That doesn’t give us much precision.”

“No.”

She consulted the map a moment longer, then, gathering it up, she paced off about a hundred feet down the corridor before stopping again. “My best guess is that this is the thin spot, right here.”

The rumble of a subway car began to fill the air, followed by a roar as it passed the station without stopping, the noise quickly fading.

“You’ve been in the tomb?” said D’Agosta.

“Vinnie, I’ve practically been
living
in the tomb.”

“And you can hear the subway in there?”

“All the time. They couldn’t get rid of it.”

D’Agosta pressed his ear to the tiled wall. “If they can hear out, we should be able to hear in.”

“They’d have to be making a lot of noise in there.”

He straightened up, looked at Hayward. “They are.”

Then he pressed his ear to the wall again.

F
rom his hiding place in the dim doorway, Smithback watched the murmuring, complaining crowds being ushered out of the hall toward the elevators. He lingered a few minutes after the last had passed by, then crept forward, ducked under the velvet rope, and inched along the wall to the corner, where he could peer into the Egyptian Hall. It wasn’t difficult to stay hidden: the only light came from the hundreds of candles still flickering in the hall, leaving much of the antechamber in darkness.

Pressed into the shadows beside the entrance, he watched a small knot of people emerge from the side door leading to the control room. He recognized Manetti, in his usual ugly brown suit, sporting an impressive comb-over. The rest were museum guards except for one man who, in particular, attracted his attention. He was tall and brown-haired, wearing a white turtleneck and slacks. Although his face was turned away, a large bandage was clearly visible on one cheek. What attracted Smithback’s attention wasn’t so much the man’s appearance as the way he moved: so smoothly and gracefully it seemed almost feline. It reminded him of someone…

He watched as the man strode to a huge silver cauldron of crushed ice. Dozens of champagne bottles had been pressed into the ice, their snouts pointing upward.

“Help me get rid of these bottles,” Smithback heard the man say to Manetti—and the instant he spoke, Smithback recognized that honeyed voice.

Special Agent Pendergast. Out of prison? What’s he doing here?
He felt a sudden thrill of excitement and surprise: here was the man whose name he’d been working to clear, walking around as casually as if he owned the place. But along with the excitement came a sudden sinking feeling—in his experience, Pendergast appeared only when the shit was really hitting the fan.

Two of the guards jogged up to the tomb entrance, and Smithback watched as they made an attempt to lever open the doors with a wrecking bar and a sledgehammer, without success.

Smithback felt the sinking feeling increase. People were trapped inside the tomb—he knew that—but why this sudden desperate effort to get them out? Was something going wrong inside?

His blood ran cold with speculation. Fact was, the tomb presented a perfect opportunity to launch a terrorist attack. An incredible concentration of money, power, and influence was inside: dozens of political bigwigs, along with an elite slice of the country’s corporate, legal, and scientific leadership—not to mention everybody of importance at the museum itself.

He returned his attention to Pendergast, who was pulling the bottles of champagne out of the ice and hurling them into a trash can. In another moment, he’d emptied the cauldron, leaving only a heap of crushed and melting ice. Now he stepped to an adjoining food table and, with a great sweep of his hand, cleared it of its contents, sending platters of oysters, mounds of caviar, cheeses, prosciutto, and breads crashing to the floor. Aghast, Smithback watched a massive Brie roll like a white wheel all the way across the hall before coming to a gluey rest in a dark corner.

Next, Pendergast went from table to table, collecting dozens of tea candles and arranging them in a circle around the cleared area to provide illumination.

What the hell is he doing?

A man came into the hall at a dead run, carrying a bottle of something, which Pendergast immediately snatched up, checked, then shoved into the mound of crushed ice. Two more men arrived, one pushing a cart crammed with bottles and laboratory equipment—beakers and flasks—which were also shoved into the ice.

Pendergast straightened and, his back to Smithback’s hiding place, began rolling up his sleeves. “I need a volunteer,” he said.

“What exactly are you doing?” asked Manetti.

“Making nitroglycerin.”

There was a silence.

Manetti cleared his throat. “This is crazy. Surely there’s a better way to get into the tomb than blowing your way in.”

“No volunteers?”

“I’m calling for a SWAT team,” said Manetti. “We need professionals to break in there. We can’t just blow it up willy-nilly.”

“Well, then,” said Pendergast, “how about you, Mr. Smithback?”

Smithback froze in the blackness, hesitated, looked around. “Who, me?” he said in a small voice.

“You’re the only Smithback here.”

Smithback emerged from the shadows of the doorway and stepped into the hall, and only now did Pendergast turn and look him in the eye.

“Well, sure,” Smithback stammered. “Always happy to help a— Wait. Did you say
nitro?”

“I did.”

“Will it be dangerous?”

“Given my inexperience at the synthesis, and the impurity of the formulation that will inevitably result, I’d estimate our chances are slightly better than fifty percent.”

“Chances at what?”

“Enduring a premature detonation.”

Smithback swallowed. “You must… be worried about what’s happening in the tomb.”

“I am, in fact, terrified, Mr. Smithback.”

“My wife’s in there.”

“Then you have a special incentive to help.”

Smithback stiffened. “Just tell me what to do.”

“Thank you.” Pendergast turned to Manetti. “See to it that everyone leaves the hall and takes cover.”

“I’m calling for a SWAT team, and I strongly suggest—”

But the look on Pendergast’s face silenced the security director. The guards hastened out of the hall, Manetti following, his radio crackling.

Pendergast glanced back at Smithback. “Now, if you will kindly follow my instructions
to the letter
, we will have a fair chance of pulling this off.”

He went back to setting up the equipment: rotating the bottles in the ice to chill them more quickly; taking a flask, shoving it deep into the ice, setting a glass thermometer within it. “The problem, Mr. Smithback, is that we have no time to do this properly. We need to mix the chemicals quickly. And that sometimes provokes an undesirable result.”

“Look, what’s happening in the tomb?”

“Let us concentrate on the problem at hand, please.”

Smithback swallowed again, trying to get a grip on himself. All thought of a big story had vanished.
Nora is in there, Nora is in there
—the phrase pounded in his head like a drumbeat.

“Hand me the bottle of sulfuric acid, but wipe it off first.”

Smithback located the bottle, pulled it out of the ice, wiped it down, and handed it to Pendergast, who poured it carefully into the chilled flask. A nasty, acrid smell arose. When the agent was satisfied he had poured in the requisite amount, he stepped back and capped the bottle. “Check the temperature.”

Smithback peered down at the glass thermometer, pulled it from the flask, held it close enough to a candle to read.

“Needless to say,” said Pendergast dryly, “you will take exquisite care with that candle flame. I should also mention these acids will dissolve human flesh in a matter of seconds.”

Smithback’s hand jerked away.

“Give me the nitric acid. Same procedure, please.”

Smithback wiped off the bottle and handed it to Pendergast. The agent unscrewed the top and held it up, examining the label.

“As I pour this in, I want you to stir the solution with the thermometer, reading off the temperature at thirty-second intervals.”

“Right.”

Pendergast measured the acid into a graduated cylinder, then began pouring it, a tiny amount at a time, into the chilled flask while Smithback stirred.

“Ten degrees,” said Smithback.

More exquisitely slow pouring.

“Eighteen… twenty-five… Going up fast… Thirty…”

The mixture began to foam and Smithback could feel the heat of it on his face, along with a hideous stench. The ice began melting around the beaker.

“Don’t breathe those fumes,” said Pendergast, pausing in his pouring. “And keep stirring.”

“Thirty-five… thirty-six… thirty-four… thirty-one…”

“It’s stabilizing,” said Pendergast, relief audible in his voice. He resumed pouring in the nitric acid, a tiny bit at a time.