“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.”
Chapter 64
With a superhuman effort, Nora steadied herself, tried to focus her mind. She realized she was not falling into the welclass="underline" 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.