The Book of the Dead

by Richard Preston

  “I’m going for the Hawaiian double pineapple with honey-glazed ham, extra garlic, and two Dr Peppers.”

  It was typical of DeMeo to assume Lipper gave a shit what kind of pizza he wanted. Lipper pulled out two twenties, passed them over.

  “Thanks, bro.”

  He watched DeMeo’s form labor up the stone staircase and vanish in the gloom. The footsteps echoed slowly away.

  Lipper breathed in the blessed silence. Maybe DeMeo would be run over by a bus on the way back.

  With that pleasant thought in mind, he turned his attention back to the computer’s control panel. He moused over each peripheral device in turn, checking to see that it was alive and functional, surprised again that each one responded perfectly, on cue, as if somebody had already debugged the network for them. DeMeo, for all his wisecracks and shenanigans, had actually done his job—and done it perfectly.

  Suddenly he paused, frowning. A software icon was jumping frantically in the dock. Somehow the main routines for the sound-and-light show had loaded automatically, when, in fact, he had specifically programmed them to load manually, at least during the alpha testing, so he could step through the code and check each module.

  So there was a glitch, after all. He’d need to fix it, of course: but not right now. The software was loaded, the controllers were online and ready, the screens in place, the fog machine filled.

  He might as well run it.

  He drew in another breath, savoring the peace and quiet, his finger over the return key, ready to execute the program. Then he paused. A sound had drifted toward him from the deeper part of the tomb: the Hall of Truth, or maybe even the burial chamber itself. Couldn’t be DeMeo, since he’d be coming from the opposite direction. And the pizzas would take at least half an hour; if he were lucky, maybe even forty minutes.

  Perhaps it was a guard or something.

  The sound came again: a strange, dry, scurrying sound. No guard made a noise like that.

  Mice, maybe?

  He rose indecisively. It was probably nothing. Christ, he was letting himself get spooked by all this curse crap the guards had started to whisper about. It was probably just a mouse. After all, there’d been plenty of mice in the old Egyptian galleries, enough so the Maintenance Department had needed to place glue traps. Still, if some had gotten into the tomb itself—maybe through one of the cable holes DeMeo had opened up—all it would take was a pair of rodent teeth sunk into one cable to crash the whole system and cause a delay of hours, maybe even days, while they examined each cable. Inch by frigging inch.

  Another scurry, like wind rustling dead leaves. Leaving the lights dimmed, he picked up DeMeo’s coat—ready to throw it over a mouse if he found one—then rose and made his way stealthily into the deepest recesses of the tomb.

  Teddy DeMeo fumbled for his key card, swiping it through the newly installed lock to the Egyptian gallery while trying not to drop the pizzas at the same time. The damn pies were cold—the guards at the security entrance had taken their sweet time clearing him through, when the same idiots had checked him out just twenty-five minutes earlier. Security? More like moronity.

  The door to the Egyptian gallery whispered shut and he strode down the length of the hall, turned into the annex—and was surprised to find the doors to the tomb shut before him.

  A suspicion took root in his mind: had Lipper gone and done the first run without him? But he quickly dismissed it. Lipper, though a fussy artiste type and cranky as hell, was basically a cool guy.

  He fumbled out his key card and swiped it, hearing the locks disengage. Still balancing the pizzas and drinks, he got an elbow into the door and shoved it open, then slipped through, the door clicking shut behind him.

  The lights had dimmed to level 1—the level they would be at after a run—and once again, DeMeo felt a stab of suspicion.

  “Hey, Jayce!” he called out. “Pizza delivery!”

  His voice echoed and died away.

  “Jayce!”

  He descended the staircase, walked down the corridor, and went as far as the bridge over the well before pausing again.

  “Jayce! Pizza time!”

  He listened while the echoes died away. Lipper wouldn’t have done an initial test run without him: not after all the time they’d put in on the project together. He wasn’t that much of an asshole. He probably had his earphones on, checking the sound track or something. Or maybe he was listening to his iPod—sometimes he did that while working. DeMeo ventured across the bridge and entered their main work area in the Hall of the Chariots.

  As he did so, he heard a distant footstep. At least he thought it was a footstep. But it had made an odd thumping sound. It came from deeper within the tomb, probably the burial chamber.

  “That you, Jayce?” For the first time, DeMeo felt a creeping sense of alarm. He put the pizzas down on the worktable and took a few steps toward the Hall of Truth and the burial chamber beyond. He could see that it was quite dark—still at level 1 lighting, like the rest of the tomb. He couldn’t see a damn thing, to tell the truth.

  He went back to the worktable, looked at the computer. It was fully booted, the software loaded and waiting in standby mode. He moused over to the lighting icon, trying to remember how to raise the light levels. Lipper had done it a hundred times, but he’d never paid much attention. There were some software sliders visible in an open window and he clicked the one labeled Hall of the Chariots.

  Christ! The lights dimmed, sending the disquieting Egyptian carvings and stone statuary even further into gloom. He quickly moused the slider in the other direction, and the lights intensified. Then he began brightening the lights in the rest of the tomb.

  He heard a thump and turned with a jerk. “Jayce?”

  It had definitely come from the burial chamber.

  DeMeo laughed. “Hey, Jayce, c’mere. I got the pizzas.”

  There was that strange noise again: Draaaag-thump. Draaaag-thump. As if somebody, or some thing, was dragging one limb.

  “It sounds just like The Mummy’s Curse. Ha, ha, Jayce—good one!”

  No answer.

  DeMeo, still chuckling, turned from the computer and strode through the Hall of Truth. He turned his eyes away from the squatting form of Ammut—something about the Egyptian god, the eater of hearts with a crocodile head and lion’s mane, creeped him out even worse than the rest of the tomb.

  He paused beyond the door to the burial chamber. “You’re a funny guy, Jayce.”

  He waited for Lipper’s laugh, for the sight of his skinny form emerging from behind a pilaster. But there was nothing. The silence was absolute. With a nervous swallow, he ducked inside, peered about the tomb.

  Nothing. The other doors leading away from the burial chamber were dark—they weren’t part of the computer lighting scheme. Lipper must be hiding in one of those rooms, preparing to jump out and scare him half to death.

  “Hey, Jayce, come on. The pizzas are cold and getting colder.”

  The lights suddenly went out.

  “Hey!”

  DeMeo spun around, but the tomb doglegged at the Hall of Truth and he could not see back into the Hall of the Chariots—nor could he see the comforting blue glow of the LCD screen.

  He spun again, hearing the strange, dragging footfalls behind him, moving closer now.

  “This isn’t funny, Jay.”

  He felt for his flashlight—but of course he wasn’t carrying it; it was back in the chariots hall, on the table. Why couldn’t he see the indirect glow of the LCD? Had the power been cut as well? The darkness was total.

  “Look, Jay, cut the crap. I’m serious.”

  He shuffled backward in the dark, came up against one of the pillars, began feeling his way around it. The steps drew still closer.

  Draaaag-thump. Draaaag-thump.

  “Jay, come on. Cut the bullshit.”

  Suddenly, from closer than he ever expected, he heard the raspy sound of air escaping from a dry throat. A rattle that was almost a hi
ss, full of something like hatred.

  “Jesus!” DeMeo took a step forward and swiped his heavy fist through the air, striking something that shuffled back with another snakelike hiss.

  “Stop it! Stop it!”

  He both heard and felt the thing rush at him with a high keening sound. He tried to twist aside but felt, with astonishment, a terrible blow. Searing heat knifed through his chest. With a shriek, he fell backward, clawing at the darkness, and as he hit the ground, he felt something heavy and cold stamp on his throat and bear down with shocking weight. He lashed about with his hands as he heard the bones crackling in his neck and a sudden, dazzling explosion of urine-colored light flashed in his eyes—and then nothing.

  19

  The large, elegant library in Agent Pendergast’s mansion on Riverside Drive was the last room one would expect to call crowded. And yet—D’Agosta reflected moodily—there was no other word for it this evening. Tables, chairs, and much of the floor were covered with plats and diagrams. Half a dozen easels and whiteboards had been erected, showing schematics, maps, routes of ingress and egress. The low-tech reconnaissance they had conducted of Herkmoor a few nights earlier had now been enhanced by high-tech remote surveillance, including false-color satellite images in radar and infrared wavelengths. Boxes lay shoved against one wall, overflowing with printouts, data dumps from computer probes of the Herkmoor network, and aerial photographs of the prison complex.

  In the middle of the controlled chaos sat Glinn, nearly motionless in his wheelchair, speaking quietly in his usual monotone. He had begun the meeting with a crushingly detailed analysis of Herkmoor’s physical plant and security measures. D’Agosta needed no convincing there: if any prison was escape-proof, it was Herkmoor. The old-fashioned defenses like redundant guard posts and triple fencing had been bolstered by cutting-edge instrumentation, including laser-beam “lattices” at every exit, hundreds of digital videocams, and a network of passive listening devices set into the walls and ground, ready to pick up anything from digging to stealthy footsteps. Every prisoner was required to wear an ankle bracelet with an embedded GPS device, which broadcast the prisoner’s location to a central command unit. If the bracelet were cut, an alarm would immediately sound and an automatic lockdown sequence would begin.

  As far as D’Agosta was concerned, Herkmoor was invincible.

  From there, Glinn had segued to the next step in the escape plan. And this was where D’Agosta’s simmering unease had boiled over. Not only did the idea seem simplistic and inept, but, even worse, it turned out that he, D’Agosta—and he alone—was the man assigned to carry it out.

  He glanced around the library, waiting impatiently for Glinn to finish. Wren had arrived earlier that evening with a set of architectural plans of the prison, “borrowed” from the private records section of the New York Public Library, and now he hovered around Constance Greene. With his luminous eyes and almost translucent skin, the man looked like a cave creature, paler even than Pendergast . . . if that were possible.

  Next, D’Agosta’s gaze fell on Constance. She sat at a side table opposite Wren, a stack of books before her, listening to Glinn and taking notes. She was wearing a severe black dress with a row of tiny pearl buttons in the back, running from the base of her spine up to the nape of her neck. D’Agosta found himself wondering who had buttoned them up for her. More than once, he had caught her privately stroking one hand over the other, or gazing into the fire that crackled on the huge grate, lost in thought.

  She’s probably as skeptical about all this as I am, he thought. Because as he looked around at their little foursome—Proctor, the chauffeur, was unaccountably absent—he couldn’t imagine a group less suited for such a daunting task. He had never really liked Glinn and his smooth arrogance, and he wondered if the man had finally met his match with the Herkmoor penitentiary.

  There came a pause in Glinn’s drone, and he turned toward D’Agosta.

  “Do you have any questions or comments so far, Lieutenant?”

  “Yeah. A comment: the scheme is crazy.”

  “Perhaps I should have phrased the question differently. Do you have any comments of substance to make?”

  “You think I can just waltz in, make a spectacle of myself, and get out scot-free? This is Herkmoor we’re talking about. I’ll be lucky not to end up in the cell next to Pendergast.”

  Glinn’s expression did not change. “As long as you stick to the script, there will be no problems and you will get off ‘scot-free.’ Everything has been planned down to the last eventuality. We know exactly how the guards and prison personnel will react to your every move.” Glinn suddenly smiled, his thin lips stretching mirthlessly. “That, you see, is Herkmoor’s fatal weakness. That and those GPS bracelets, which show the position of every inmate in the entire prison at the touch of a key . . . a most foolish innovation.”

  “If I go in there and make a scene, won’t it put them on alert?”

  “Not if you follow the script. There is some critical information which only you can get. And some prep work that only you can do.”

  “Prep work?”

  “I’ll get to that shortly.”

  D’Agosta felt his frustration rise. “Pardon my saying so, but all your planning isn’t going to mean jack once I’m inside those walls. This is the real world, and people are unpredictable. You can’t know what they’re going to do.”

  Glinn looked at him without moving. “You’ll forgive me for contradicting you, Lieutenant, but human beings are disgustingly predictable. Especially in an environment like Herkmoor, where the rules of behavior are mapped out in excruciating detail. The scheme may seem simple, even inane, to you. But that’s its power.”

  “It’s just going to get me into deeper shit than I am already.”

  After dropping this epithet, he glanced at Constance. But the young woman was staring into the fire with her strange eyes, not even seeming to have heard.

  “We never fail,” Glinn said, remaining unnervingly calm and neutral. “That’s our guarantee. All you need to do, Lieutenant, is follow instructions.”

  “I’ll tell you what we really need: a pair of eyes on the inside. You can’t tell me none of those guards can be turned—blackmailed, whatever. Christ, prison guards are one step away from being criminals themselves, at least in my experience.”

  “Not these guards. Any attempt to turn one would be foolhardy.” Glinn wheeled himself over to a desk. “If I told you we had somebody on the inside, however, would it reassure you?”

  “Hell, yes.”

  “Would it secure your cooperation? Silence all these doubts?”

  “If the source was reliable, yeah.”

  “I believe you will find our source to be above reproach.” And with that, Glinn picked up a single piece of paper and handed it to D’Agosta.

  D’Agosta glanced over the sheet. It contained a long column of numbers, with two corresponding times linked to each number.

  “What’s this?” he asked.

  “A schedule of guard patrols in the solitary unit during lockdown, from ten P.M. to six A.M. And this is just one of the many useful pieces of information that have come our way.”

  D’Agosta stared in disbelief. “How the hell did you get it?”

  Glinn allowed himself a smile—at least D’Agosta thought the faint thinning of the lips was a smile. “Our inside source.”

  “And who might that be, if you don’t mind my asking?”

  “You know him well.”

  Now D’Agosta was even more surprised. “Not—?”

  “Special Agent Pendergast.”

  D’Agosta slumped in his chair. “How did he get this to you?”

  This time a true smile broke over Glinn’s features. “Why, Lieutenant, don’t you remember? You brought it out.”

  “Me?”

  Glinn reached behind the desk, pulled out a plastic box. Looking inside, D’Agosta was surprised to see some of the trash he’d collected in his recon of the prison per
imeter—gum wrappers and scraps of linen—now carefully dried, pressed, and mounted between sheets of archival plastic. When he looked closely at the linen scraps, he could just make out faint markings.

  “There’s an old drain in Pendergast’s cell—as in most of the older cells at Herkmoor—which was never hooked into the modern sewage treatment system. It drains into a catchment basin outside the prison walls, which in turn empties into Herkmoor Creek. Pendergast writes us a message on a scrap of trash, sticks it into the drain, and washes it down with water from the sink, which ends up in the creek. Simple. We discovered it because the DEP had recently cited Herkmoor for the water-quality violation.”