“Matches?”
He felt his shirt pocket and discovered that he had brought his cigarettes. It occurred to him that he should not light a match, since it would consume oxygen, but he had to see what was around him, at least for a few moments.
Anything was better than not knowing.
He patted his pockets: no matches. Cigarettes, but no matches. He must have left them on the floor in the other room.
“Damn.”
At least, they would come back for him. Conway was probably already scrambling out of the cleft, going for the Land Rover to get help. He wondered what reaction would be in the camp. How long would it take them to get back? Would they come immediately or wait until night? What if Iskander showed up and wanted to know where he was?
In the darkness, he looked at his wrist. The dial glowed faintly, the only light in the room. It was three-fifteen in the morning.
If Conway returned to the camp and came directly back, it would be at least three hours. It was impossible to say how long it would take them to move the block and reopen the passage.
Suppose it took days? Suppose the block weighed several tons?
He coughed and breathed stale, dry air. Was this place airtight? How much air was in the room?
How long could he last?
He shook his head and sat on the floor. Better stay calm, breathe slowly. Conserve everything. Try to form a plan of action.
They might take days.
Horrible thought.
If he did not suffocate, what would be next? Not starvation: you could go quite a long time without food. Water: that was the problem. Somewhere, he had read how long a man could go without water. It was not very long. Two days—something like that.
As he thought, he felt himself begin to sweat. Don’t sweat, you’re wasting water. He felt ridiculous. His heart pounded in his chest. He breathed deeply and forced himself to be calm.
He tried to remember an article he had once read about two Germans lost on the desert. They had survived weeks, drinking their own urine.
He leaned back against the wall and sighed. He was being morbid and needed something else to think about. They’d probably have him out of here in four hours.
He looked at his watch. Three-nineteen.
“Give them time.”
He turned around and ran his fingers over the wall. He felt a thin vertical groove. Moving his hand laterally, he felt another groove about seven inches away. In between, shapes had been shallowly cut into the rock.
Rows of hieroglyphics.
So this room, like the sunken chamber, was covered with painted figures in long vertical rows from floor to ceiling.
This might even be the burial chamber itself.
The thought was disquieting.
Whatever the room was, he was the first person to set foot inside it for three thousand years. All around him were sights no man had witnessed for all those centuries.
In a way, it was fitting that he could not see them either.
“Explore.”
But he had no idea how large the room was, and he had a vision of himself stepping away from the wall, losing it forever. Lost in a world of blackness.
Did he have any string?
Again, he patted his pockets: no.
A knife? No.
Then he had an idea. He stripped off his shirt, found the tail in the darkness, and ripped it with his teeth. The fabric was surprisingly strong, but he finally managed to tear several long strips from the back up to the collar. He knotted them all together to make a single long strip, like a kite tail.
Using the flashlight and a small rock that he found, he anchored one end of the improvised ribbon to the wall near the entranceway and took the other in his hand. He moved down the wall, feeling it with his hands, counting his steps.
Fifteen feet, and he reached a corner. He was about to follow the next wall, when he felt the ribbon tighten. He went back and started the other way. This one ran nine feet before reaching a corner.
So one wall was twenty-four feet long. At least he knew something.
He returned to the passage and sat down to think. He was tempted to step out and explore the central portion of the room, but at the same time he was hesitant.
Finally, curiosity overcame him, and he crawled forward on his hands and knees, holding one hand out in front of him.
After a few moments, his fingers touched something.
He felt and gripped the object.
It was an upright, muscular human calf.
7. Help
HE PULLED HIS HAND back as if scalded. He listened tensely in the darkness. No sound, no breathing.
Tentatively, he reached forward again, lower.
A foot. Five toes encased in a sandal. He ran his hand up the leg. Hairless, cold, smooth.
Mummies were always wrapped in cloth, weren’t they?
Emboldened by this thought, he reached up to the knee, then felt the folds of a stiff tunic.
He rapped it with his fingers: wood.
It was a statue. He sighed and relaxed.
“A goddamned statue.”
He stood and measured himself against it. It was big, nearly seven feet tall. With his hands, he felt the outlines, forming an image of the pose in his mind. It was a classic Egyptian stance—erect, one foot forward, one hand down, fist clenched, the other arm bent at the elbow, holding a staff.
Several minutes passed before he realized the significance of his discovery.
“A statue!”
They had found it. This must be it. This must be the tomb itself.
“Christ.”
They had found it.
He looked at his watch. Three-forty. Wouldn’t they ever come? He was practically choking with excitement. The last tomb. It was right here; he was in it.
A sobering thought came to him—it might be his tomb, too.
He decided to explore further. A few moments of groping brought him to a second statue, apparently identical to the first. They were standing on both sides of the passageway through which Pierce had entered.
He felt like a child with a new Christmas present. It had all come true, all his hopes, his desires. They had done it.
They had done it.
Later, he crawled back to the wall and leaned against it. The excitement, the exertion of the evening, and his own fear combined to make him utterly exhausted. He fell asleep.
When he awoke, he found he was breathing rapidly. He forced himself to slow down, but in a few moments found his breathing was again fast.
What would McKiernan have said?
Pierce had interviewed him eighteen months ago; he was a physiologist working for NASA. He allowed his mind to wander back through the conversation. They had talked about problems astronauts faced. Acceleration, where the forces made a man’s blood as thick as liquid mercury; vibration, which could flap your kidneys against your backbone until they were a bleeding pulp; heat and cold; air.
McKiernan had talked about air. What had he said? Something about carbon dioxide.
He could not remember. The time was eight-twelve.
He fell asleep again, and when he awoke, he remembered. Too much carbon dioxide stimulated respiration—it made you breathe faster.
That meant Pierce was running out of air.
He winced in the darkness.
“The last goddamned tomb.”
For any man, his first tomb was his last.
He looked at his watch. It was eight-twelve. It must have stopped. Hours ago—or minutes ago.
Where were they, anyhow?
The next time he checked his watch, he could no longer read the luminous dial; so obviously, time had passed. He was weak now, unable to do more than lie against the wall, breathing shallowly.
He tried to count his breaths. It gave him something to do. He quit at 1,791.
Then he heard scratching.
At first, he could not be sure, it was so faint. Then there was a tapping sound. He turned to the p
assage and tapped back.
Next, a metallic ringing. There were tapping to him with the crowbar.
They were out there.
Thank God.
He sank back against the wall. The tapping stopped. It was silent, then a crunching sound, and the stone moved slightly. A moment later, it fell back into place.
Then silence.
They were having trouble.
He felt dizzy, unable to think clearly. He waited passively.
More crunching.
Silence.
“The problem is air,” Barnaby said. He had come back from Cairo just as the other three were about to leave in the Land Rover. Conway and Nikos had been grim; Lisa was obviously upset, struggling to control herself.
Now they stood hunched in the passage, looking at the stone that blocked their way.
“Air,” Barnaby said. “These people knew the secret of airtight construction. We’ve already seen that. We must get air to him.”
He turned to Conway. “How long was the original length of the passage?”
“Are you kidding? We didn’t stop to measure, man.”
“It would have helped if you had,” Barnaby said. “Then we could measure the new length, and determine how big this block is. It could be four feet long and weigh several tons.”
“Talk, talk,” Nikos said irritably. “Get away from there.”
The others stepped back. He wedged in the crowbar and pushed.
A crunching sound, and the rock moved slightly. “It doesn’t weigh several tons,” he said. “Five hundred pounds at most.”
“That still doesn’t help much,” Barnaby said.
“Try to look on the bright side, will you?” Conway said.
From the sunken chamber, Lisa called: “Can I do anything?”
“No,” Barnaby said.
“Yes,” Nikos said. He turned to leave.
“Where are you going?”
“Use your head,” Nikos snapped. “We have to move a heavy object. What have we got to work with?”
Barnaby shook his head.
“The jack from the Land Rover,” Nikos said. He hurried down the tunnel, and they heard him say to Lisa, “Come on.”
Barnaby and Conway looked at each other.
“The man is forgetting something,” Conway said. “That jack requires several inches of space to wedge itself in. This rock sits flush with the ground.”
“What do we do?”
“Look, man, you’re the one who’s supposed to be all rested up and fresh. I’m tired.” He was; he had not slept since he and Pierce had gone out the night before.
“I don’t know.”
Conway bit his lip. “Remember Easter Island?”
“What about it?”
“Do you remember,” Conway said patiently, “the big stone heads?”
“Yes.” Barnaby did not see the point. Easter Island was an isolated place in the South Pacific where there had been erected huge stone heads in the earth.
“You remember how they managed to raise those heads?”
“Sure,” Barnaby said. “With little rocks…”
“That’s right,” Conway said. “The man is right. Now will you get me some rocks?”
“Where?”
“Well, there’s a whole mess of them in the other room. That door fell out and shattered on the floor, remember?”
“What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to wedge this mother up with the crowbar while you slip the rocks under. Then Nikos can fit the jack in when he comes back. Right?”
That was what they did.
A grinding sound, different from the crunching he had heard for the last half hour. This sound was smooth, continuous. Pierce blinked as pale light spilled into the room. Cool air rushed in; he breathed deeply and relaxed. Dimly, he heard voices.
“There he is.”
“Give me your light.”
“Just a minute, just a minute. Stand back. Give the fella air.” Somebody was shaking him. “Robbie, you okay, man? You still got the old pizzaz?”
Something soft and warm. Hair in his face. Perfume.
“Oh, Robert, Robert. I was so worried.”
Tears.
“Now look at that. Here the poor fella has been suffocating, and the first thing she does, she smothers him.”
Kisses. He felt her lips and opened his eyes.
“Oh, Robert.”
He put his arms around her.
“He has the old pizzaz, after all.”
He began to feel better. He looked up at the three flashlights glaring down at him.
“Hey,” he said, “can’t a guy have any privacy?”
They laughed, blowing out their relief.
She kissed him.
The flashlights turned away. Then Conway said, “Son of a bitch!”
They all looked over.
In the flashlight, they saw a huge statue of a man, stiffly erect. His clothes were gold.
The beam moved. It caught the glint of a second statue. Then around the room, heaped with articles of all sorts—chests, weapons, clothes, urns of alabaster and brightly painted clay, canes, miniature statues of the gods, golden stools, oars, a full-sized gold chariot.
“Welcome to the tomb,” Pierce said.
“It’s not much,” Conway said, “but he calls it home.”
On one wall was a monumental frieze showing the Pharaoh being embraced by Horus, the god with the head of a hawk. The colors were still vivid—reds, blues, purples. On another wall was a large rendering of the scarab beetle, a sacred animal to the Egyptians; above it was a depiction of the sacred procession carrying the king’s mummy to its final resting-place.
Across the ceiling stretched a long line of gods, each dressed like the pharaoh: Anubis, the jackal-god, Sebek, the crocodile, Hathor, the cow, Thoth, the ibis, Horus, the hawk.
Men’s bodies with the heads of animals. Barnaby ticked off the names, then stopped. Nobody said anything for a long time.
8. The Burial Chamber
IN HIS DUSTY WORK clothes, Pierce felt out of place in the lobby of the Winter Palace. The clerk looked at him in suspicion. “You wish to send a telegram to Tangier?”
“That’s right.”
“Please fill out the form. Are you a guest in the hotel?”
“No.”
“That will be five pounds.”
Highway robbery, Pierce thought, as he paid and filled out the form.
REQUEST ADDITIONAL 7500 DOLLARS IMMEDIATELY
PIERCE
Four days later, Lord Grover sat with them around the evening fire.
“What have you done so far?”
“Nothing,” Conway said. “We haven’t touched a thing.” He nodded toward Barnaby. “He’s playing archaeologist.”
“We must proceed slowly,” Barnaby said. “We must learn all we can.”
“Have you found the coffin?”
“Sarcophagus,” Barnaby corrected automatically. “No, not yet. The room we have discovered seems to be an antechamber or storage room. It communicates through a plaster door to another room, which we suspect may be the actual burial chamber. But we have not yet opened that door.”
“I want to see the mummy,” Grover said, rubbing his hands.
“In good time,” Barnaby said. “We must go about this in an orderly fashion.”
“You shouldn’t have called me,” Grover said, “until you had the mummy. I was all set for the mummy.”
“You ought to be able to amuse yourself until then,” Conway said. Grover had brought along a new pair of girls: a silently beautiful girl from Hong Kong and a robust, hugely-proportioned German. They made an absurd pair, but he seemed to relish variety.
Pierce sat by the fire, holding Lisa’s hand. They had been inseparable for the last week. The tension between them had snapped abruptly, after the accident.
“In Cairo, I tried to buy some marijuana,” Grover continued. “And you know what they told me? That it was illegal. I
llegal. Bloody wogs.” He turned to Pierce. “I understand you had a bit of trouble,” he said. “Feeling better now?”
“He feels fine,” Lisa said.
Grover blinked but said nothing. He shot Pierce a quick glance, then turned to Conway.
“How’s the weather been?”
“Nice. Real nice. A little unpredictable, but that makes it interesting.”
Barnaby said, “How long will you be here?”
“Long enough,” Grover said, “to see the mummy. I just want to see the mummy. Then I can die a happy man.”
“Nobody dies a happy man,” Nikos said.
Barnaby bent over the alabaster vase. It was delicately shaped like a lotus bud. They had moved floodlights into the antechamber to give them working light.
Barnaby read the inscription on the vase: “May your ka live eternally; may you pass millions of tranquil years, you who loved Thebes, seated with your face turned to the north wind and your eyes contemplating happiness!”
“Very nice,” Nikos said. “Who’s ka?”
“The ka is the soul,” Barnaby said, turning the vase in his hands. “And a north wind is the prevailing direction of wind on the Nile. It was then and still is.”
“That’s nice. When do we open the door?”
“You mean to the next room? Soon.”
Lord Grover walked gingerly among the objects in the antechamber. This was his first chance to see it all, and he said very little. He walked up to the twin statues and peered into the faces, which stared solemnly forward.
He looked down at the base of one statue. “What’s this?”
“Don’t touch!” Barnaby said.
“I wasn’t going to touch,” Grover said, withdrawing.
“They’re offerings. Olive and persea.”
Grover peered down at the branches and leaves. “Three thousand years old,” he said. “Remarkable.” He looked over to Nikos. “Do you suppose they used hashish? I wouldn’t be adverse to a little three-thousand-year-old hashish.”
Nikos shrugged: “It’s all the same.”
“Yes, I suppose so. Perhaps that’s the point, isn’t it?”
He walked over to the gilded chariot and ran his hand over the golden rim of one wheel, which was inscribed with hieroglyphics. “What does this say?”
“Don’t touch!”
“All right, all right.”
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