"Heaven forbid that anything do that." She closed her eyes. "Come back and check me out first thing in the morning. Bring me something to wear. Don't tell Allie I was shot. Tell her it was an accident at the lab."
"She may find out. You're on the news."
"She doesn't watch the news. It makes her unhappy."
"It makes all of us unhappy."
"Not like it does her."
"I'll do my best." He left the room.
Egypt.
She tried to hold off sleep. She should think of all the ramifications so that she could prepare herself. It didn't have to be a disaster. But a hacker of that brilliance and capability had to be in demand, and the money in the Middle East had to be tempting to…
She was drifting away. Not now. She had to get a grasp on the problem and…
It was no use. Let go. Sometimes when she slept, she woke with the answer to a problem.
Egypt…
SAQQARA, EGYPT
"Let's go back," Ben Leonard muttered. "This is crazy. Crawling through a damn tomb isn't my idea of any way to spend a night."
"We're almost there." John Tavak slid forward on his belly toward the wall of rocks ahead. He hoped he was telling the truth. They didn't have time for mistakes. But so far the other information about Kontar's tomb had checked out. Their guide, Ali, had only led them down to the main corridor before he'd scampered away like a scared rabbit. But the central room of the small tomb built in the time of Shepseskaf had been where he'd been told it would be. All artifacts had been removed from the primary burial chamber, but there was no sign of any digging in this area yet. If the secret shrine existed, then there was a chance it had not been discovered. "The wall is just up ahead, and the shrine should be just beyond it."
"How do you know?"
"The magic oracle of the Internet."
"And it told you about a shrine no one has discovered for thousands of years?"
"Sure. It whispered in my ear. That's why it's magic."
"Have I ever told you that I'm claustrophobic?" Ben asked.
"No. What a pity. We'll take you to a therapist when we get home." He'd reached the wall and was exploring the rocks with his hands. No adhesives, but the stones were tightly compacted together. It would take too long to dig through. He pulled some C-4 out of his backpack and inserted it between the rocks.
"What are you doing?" Ben asked warily. "Tell me you're not going to set off an explosion down here. This tomb has to be over two thousand years old."
"More like forty-five hundred years. And it will be just a tiny, baby explosion."
"What if it brings down the roof?"
"It won't. I've made the calculations. Back up. There may be a few shards." He lit the fuse and started moving back himself. "You might cover your eyes. Not that I think—"
The C-4 ignited. The explosion was loud, but it caused little reverberation.
Tavak lifted his head to see a jagged hole in the rocks of the wall. "That should do it." He started to crawl back. "Let's see if we've struck pay dirt."
"My God, you're crazy." Ben crawled after him. "I've suspected it for years, but this is proof positive."
Tavak was already tearing the stones away from the wall. "There's something… " He shined a beam from his flashlight into the darkness beyond. "Yes." He wriggled through the opening. "Come on. We've found her."
Dust.
Dank odors of centuries.
And, in the darkness, color gleaming on the wall across from him.
He rolled over as he reached the floor and pulled out his lantern from his backpack. He turned it on and lifted it to view the mural on the wall. "There she is."
"Wow," Ben murmured as he climbed through the broken wall into the chamber. He sat back on his heels. "Do you think it's really her?"
"Oh, yes." Tavak didn't have the slightest doubt that the woman in the mural was the legend that had brought him here.
Peseshet.
"Hell, it's no wonder the Pharaoh had her murdered," Tavak murmured as he stared at the mural on the tomb wall. "They didn't tolerate any usurping of power. She looks like a damn Pharaoh herself."
The woman in the mural was sitting on a throne with arms crossed, and in her hands she was holding forceps and a long thin knife. She couldn't have looked more proud or royal.
"Take the picture," Ben said nervously. "This place is smothering me. And Ali said we could only have thirty minutes down here before the guards came back. The Egyptian government doesn't tolerate trespassers at new finds."
"Relax." Tavak was already taking photos of the mural from every angle. "A few more minutes… "
"It's weird that this mural is even down here. It's not her tomb. You said it belonged to one of the rich merchants in the town. Why would he have put in a secret room with a shrine to Peseshet?"
"I have no idea. With any luck we may find out… "
"How did you know it was here if the locals had no idea there was a chamber?"
"I had the help of another lady who may just be as smart as Peseshet. Thank you, Rachel Kirby." He took a close-up shot of the hieroglyphics on the side of the mural. He removed the camera's memory card and slid it into his computer. "But I don't want to leave until I let my program run a check on the text and see if there's anything else down here that we should be checking out."
"Will your laptop work underground?"
"It should. I set up a relay outside in the sand before we started down. It's connecting… " Not fast and not clean. But then deciphering hieroglyphics was usually a slow, painstaking process even with the power he'd harnessed from Rachel Kirby's supercomputer. Well, not harnessed, stolen. "I'm getting bits and pieces, but it's a jumble." He e-mailed the text to his computer in Cairo and closed down and returned the memory card to the camera. "You're right, this isn't going to be fast enough. We'd better get out of here." He took a few more shots of the mural, then of the other walls of the tomb to study later. "I think I've got enough."
"Good," Ben said, relieved. "I can't breathe down here. Next time you decide to go tomb raiding, I'm going to opt out."
"I'm not raiding the tomb, I'm just taking a few pictures." Tavak smiled. "And if I find what I need in this text, then we won't have to look further."
"If? I don't like ifs."
"Too bad. The world is composed of ifs."
"And you're obsessed to resolve every one that comes your way."
"Only the ones that offer a great deal of money."
Ben snorted. "Bullshit. If that was true, we wouldn't be crawling around down here when the chance of you finding the tablet is a million to one."
"You never know. There are always answers if you work at any problem hard enough."
"For you. Not for me." Ben backed away from the wall and stood looking at the mural. "She's no Nefertiti. Look at that big nose."
"She evidently had brains, not beauty. Though if she'd lived a little longer she might have invented plastic surgery. And I like her. She's going to make us billionaires." He took a final photo. "I think I've got everything. God knows if it will do us any good. We may have to go down another path. I can't see anything that even resembles a—"
The stone floor heaved upward!
"What the—" Tavak dove for the floor. "It's a cave-in. Down!"
Rocks falling. Walls collapsing.