The Book of the Dead

by Richard Preston

  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.

  In the silence, Smithback thought he could hear something. He listened intently: it was the sound of distant screaming, muffled to a faint whisper. And then a thud sounded from the direction of the tomb, and then another, which rapidly became a dull pounding.

  He straightened suddenly. “Jesus, they’re pounding on the tomb door!”

  “Mr. Smithback! Continue reading the temperatures.”

  “Right. Thirty . . . twenty-eight . . . twenty-six . . .”

  The muffled pounding continued. Pendergast was pouring so slowly Smithback thought he would be driven mad.

  “Twenty.” Smithback tried to concentrate. “Eighteen. Please, hurry.” He found his hand shaking, and as he removed the thermometer to read it, he fumbled and splashed some drops of the sulfuric-nitric acid mix on the back of his hand.

  “Oh, shit!”

  “Keep stirring, Mr. Smithback.”

  It felt like his hand had been splattered with molten lead, and he could see smoke rising from the black spots where the acid had fallen on his skin.

  Pendergast finished pouring. “I’ll take over. Put your hand in the ice.”

  Smithback plunged his hand into the ice while Pendergast grabbed a small box of baking soda, ripped off the top. “Give me your hand.”

  He extracted it from the ice. Pendergast shook baking powder over the burn marks with one hand while stirring with the other. “The acids are neutralized now. It’ll be a nasty scar—no more. Please resume stirring while I prepare for the next addition.”

  “Right.” Smithback’s hand felt like it was on fire, but the thought of Nora trapped in the tomb reduced the pain to insignificance.

  Pendergast removed another bottle from the ice, wiped it off, and measured some of the contents carefully into a small beaker.

  The pounding, the screaming, seemed to be getting even more frantic.

  “While I pour, you slowly rotate the flask in its ice bath like a cement mixer, keeping it tilted, and read off the temperature every fifteen seconds. Do not stir—don’t even knock the thermometer against the glass. Understand?”

  “Yes.”

  With excruciating slowness, Pendergast poured while Smithback kept rotating.

  “The temperature, Mr. Smithback?”

  “Ten . . . twenty . . . It’s shooting up . . . Thirty-five . . .” The sweat appearing now on Pendergast’s forehead frightened Smithback almost more than anything else. “Thirty-five still . . . Hurry, please, for God’s sake!”

  “Keep rotating,” the agent said, his calm voice in sharp contrast to his damp brow.

  “Twenty-five . . .” The distant pounding continued unabated. “Twenty . . . twelve . . . ten . . .”

  Pendergast poured another small amount in, and once again, the temperature shot up. They waited for what seemed an eternity.

  “Look, can’t you just mix it all up now?”

  “If we blow ourselves up, there’s no hope for them, Mr. Smithback.”

  Smithback forced down his impatience, reading off the temperature and rotating the flask, while Pendergast continued pouring bit by bit, pausing between pours. At last he tipped up the beaker.

  “First stage complete. Now grab that separatory funnel and pour in some distilled water from that jug, there.”


  Smithback picked up the funnel, which looked like a drawn-out glass bulb, a long glass tube with a stopcock angling away from its bottom. Taking the glass plug from its top, he filled the funnel with water from a jug sitting in the ice.

  “Shove it upright into the ice, if you please.”

  Smithback pushed the funnel into the ice.

  Pendergast picked up the flask and, with infinite care, poured the contents into the separatory funnel. As Smithback looked on apprehensively, the agent performed the last several steps. Now a white paste lay in the beaker. Pendergast held up the beaker, examined it briefly, then turned to Smithback. “Let’s go.”

  “That’s it? We’re done?” Smithback could still hear the pounding: rising to a crescendo now, backed up by ever-more-hysterical screaming.

  “Yes.”

  “Well, let’s hurry up and blow the door!”

  “No—that door’s too heavy. Even if we could, we’d kill people: they’re all assembled just on the other side, by the sound of it. I’ve got a better entry point.”

  “Where?”

  “Follow me.” Pendergast had already turned and was heading out the door, breaking into a catlike run, cradling the beaker protectively. “It’s outside, in the subway station. To get there, we’ll have to leave the museum and run the gauntlet of bystanders outside. Your job, Mr. Smithback, is to get me through that crowd.”

  64

  With a superhuman effort, Nora steadied herself, tried to focus her mind. She realized she was not falling into the well: that the sensation of falling was, in fact, an illusion. The holographic insects had scattered the crowd, inducing a growing panic. The dreadful low throbbing sounds were getting louder, like an infernal drumbeat, and the strobe lights were brighter and more painful than any she had ever experienced. These were not the strobes she had seen in the equipment tests: these flashed so violently that they seemed to be penetrating into her very brain.

  She swallowed, looked around. The holographic image of the mummy had vanished, but the fog machines had accelerated and mist was boiling out of the sarcophagus, filling the burial chamber like rising water. The strobes were flashing into the rising fog with extreme rapidity, and each flash blossomed horribly in the mist.

  Beside her, Nora felt Viola stumble, and she reached out and grasped the Egyptologist’s hand. “Are you all right?” she asked.

  “No, I’m not. What in bloody hell is going on, Nora?”

  “I . . . I don’t know. Some kind of terrible malfunction.”

  “Those insects were no malfunction. Those had to be programmed. And these lights . . .” Viola winced, averting her eyes.

  The fog had reached their waists and was still rising. Staring into it, Nora felt an indescribable panic welling up in her. Soon it would fill the room, engulfing them all . . . It felt as if they were about to drown in the mist and the welter of flashing lights. There were shouts, scattered screams, as the crowd panicked.

  “We’ve got to get this crowd out,” she gasped.

  “Yes, we must. But, Nora, I can hardly think straight . . .”

  Not far away, Nora saw a man gesticulating madly. In one hand, he held a shield that flashed brilliantly in the winking strobes. “If everybody would please stay calm!” he cried. “I’m a New York City police officer. We’re going to get you out of here. But please, everybody, stay calm!”

  Nobody paid the slightest attention.

  Closer at hand, Nora heard a familiar voice cry out for help. Turning, she saw the mayor a few feet away, bent over, groping downward into the fog. “My wife—she fell! Elizabeth, where are you?”

  The crowd suddenly surged backward in a violent crush, accompanied by a ripple of screams, and Nora felt herself borne along against her will. She saw the undercover cop go down beneath the press of bodies.

  “Help!” cried the mayor.

  Nora struggled to reach him, but the enormous press of the crowd carried her farther away, and a fresh rumble from the sound system drowned out the mayor’s frantic calls.

  I’ve got to do something.

  “Listen!” she cried at the top of her lungs. “Listen to me! Everyone listen!”

  A lessening of the cries close around her proved that at least some people had heard.

  “We have to work together if we’re going to get out. Understand? Everyone join hands and move toward the exit! Do not run or push! Follow me!”

  To her amazement and relief, her little speech seemed to have a calming effect. The cries lessened further, and she felt Viola grasp her hand.

  The fog was now up to her chest, its surface roiled and tendril-strewn. In a moment, they would be covered, blinded.

  “Pass the word along! Keep holding hands! Follow me!”

  Nora and Viola moved forward, guiding the crowd. Another enormous boom that was more a sensation than sound—and the crowd surged again in utter panic, abandoning any pretense to order.

  “Hold hands!” she cried.

  But it was too late: the crowd had lost its mind. Nora felt herself borne along, crushed in the press, the air literally squeezed from her lungs.

  “Stop pushing!” she cried, but no one was listening any longer. She heard Viola beside her, also calling for calm, but her voice was swallowed up in the panic of the crowd and the deep booming sounds that filled the tomb. The strobes kept flashing, each flash causing a brief, brilliant explosion of light in the fog. And with each flash, she seemed to feel stranger, heavy . . . almost drugged. This wasn’t just fear she was feeling: it was something else. What was happening to her head?

  The crowd surged toward the Hall of the Chariots, possessed by a mindless, animal panic. Nora clung to Viola’s hand with all her might. Suddenly a new sound cut in over the deep booming—a high keening at the threshold of audibility, rising and falling like a banshee. The razor-sharp shriek seemed to riddle her consciousness like a shotgun blast, increasing the strange sensation of alienness. Another surge in the crowd caused her to lose her grip on Viola’s hand.

  “Viola!”

  If there was an answering cry, it was lost in the tumult.

  All of a sudden, the pressure around her relented, as if a cork had been released. She gasped, sucking air into her lungs, shaking her head in an attempt to clear it. The fog without seemed mirrored by another fog, growing within her mind.

  A pilaster loomed into view through the gloom ahead. She clung to it, recognized a bas-relief: and suddenly knew where she was. The door to the Hall of the Chariots was just up ahead. If they could just get through it and away from the infernal fog . . .

  She flattened herself against the wall, then felt her way along it, keeping out of the panicked crowd, until she could make out the door ahead. People were squeezing through, fighting and clawing, ripping at one another’s clothes, forming a bloody bottleneck of insanity and panic. More grotesque, deep groaning from the hidden speakers, along with an intensification of the bansheelike wail. Under this assault of noise, Nora felt a sudden vertigo, as if she were sinking; the kind of awful swoon she sometimes experienced in the throes of a fever. She staggered, fought to keep her feet: to fall now might mean the end.

  She heard a cry and saw, through the swirling mist, a woman nearby, lying on one side, being trampled by the crowd. Instinctively, she bent forward, grabbed an upraised hand, and hauled her to her feet. The woman’s face was bloody, one leg crooked and obviously broken—but she was still alive.

  “My leg,” the woman groaned.

  “Put your arm around my shoulder!” Nora yelled.

  She forced herself into the stream of people and the two were borne along through the doorway into the Hall of the Chariots. A dreadful, growing pressure . . . and then suddenly there was space, people milling about, disoriented, their clothes torn and bloody, weeping, shrieking for help. The woman sagged on her shoulder like a dead weight, whimpering. At least here they would be rid of the murderous barrage . . .

  And yet, strangely, they were not. She had not escaped the sound, o
r the fog, or the strobe lights. Nora looked around, disbelieving. The fog was still rising fast, and more lights flashed from the ceiling—relentless, blinding bursts that each seemed to cloud her brain a little further.

  Viola’s right, she thought in a vague, confused way. This was no malfunction. The script didn’t call for strobes or fog in the Hall of the Chariots; only in the burial chamber itself.

  This was something planned—deliberate.