Inside, she found that the door was nearly blocked by all the spindly easels and old crates that the army crew, or Lucas himself, had moved out of the way in order to clear a perimeter around the ossuary, which was now bathed in the glare of several spotlights mounted all around it. It looked like a magazine photo shoot. Lucas himself was standing on a cinder block, adjusting the lens on a movie camera fixed to a sturdy tripod. He lifted one hand to signal that he had seen them, but otherwise continued with what he was doing.
Delaney carried the Gladstone bag to a nearby worktable and unclasped its handles. An old, thin mattress, the kind used on dormitory cots, was tucked under the table.
Simone wasn’t sure where she should go or what she should do. She considered taking her coat off and draping it on one of the stools, as Delaney had just done, but there was something chilly, and discomfiting, about the room.
“Looks like this is going to be a Cecil B. DeMille production,” Delaney joked.
But Lucas was still so absorbed in the camera he made no reply.
Simone looked around. It was a big space, cluttered with wooden boxes, stacked canvases, and half-restored sculptures. The clerestory window, the one the bats had apparently flown through, had been securely closed after the incursion. Lucas had spread drop cloths around the base of the pedestal on which the ossuary rested.
Removing his good eye from the viewfinder on the camera, Lucas leaned back and surveyed the setup. He had still not looked directly at her.
“So, whose idea was the movie?” Delaney asked, removing from the bag what Simone now saw was a hacksaw, and laying it on the worktable.
“Colonel Macmillan’s.” Lucas wound a crank on the side of the Bell & Howell Eyemo assembly. “But it was standard procedure in the field, too.”
“Maybe for the Cultural Recovery Commission, it was — I hear you guys got whatever you wanted.” Turning to Simone, he said, “You knew, right, that Lucas here was one of the guys assigned to recover the artworks the Nazis had stolen?”
“I did.” Despite whatever personal problems they had, she would be forever grateful to him for rescuing the ossuary from the Nazi hoard.
Flicking a lever on the camera and positioning himself in front of one of the three lenses on the turret, Lucas announced his name, the date, the time and location of the filming, and, finally, the other dramatis personae.
“Professor Patrick Delaney, of the Princeton Mineralogy and Geophysics Department,” he said, “and… um…” He didn’t seem to know exactly how to complete the introduction.
“Simone Rashid, PhD Oxford, representing the Egyptian Ministry of Culture,” she said, putting him out of his misery by stepping into full view of the lens as she spoke. “Oh, and currently an interim professor attached to the Middle Eastern Studies Department here.”
Then, like an extra who had strayed onto the center of the stage, she dutifully took one big step back. Unless she was mistaken, Lucas had visibly blushed when she’d stood at his side.
“Yes, thanks for that,” Lucas mumbled, and finally gave her a glance, at once so bashful and sincere that it threw her into further confusion. Maybe he wasn’t the only one feeling some unacknowledged current passing between them, she thought. He flicked off the camera in order to preserve the remaining film in the canister.
“I see you’ve got a blowtorch there,” Delaney said, taking an inventory of the tools Lucas had laid out on the table. “I wouldn’t recommend it. If you try to use it to sever the chains, it’s going to scorch the alabaster for sure, and you’re going to get a very nasty chemical reaction.” Holding up his own hacksaw, he said, “Sometimes the old ways are the best ways.”
Lucas acceded, and then asked Simone if she could run the movie camera while he helped with the removal of the chains.
“I’ve never done that before,” she confessed. The Egyptian ministry was lucky if it could procure a still camera.
“There’s nothing to it,” he said, guiding her up onto the cinder block. “You just direct the lens by looking through here — the focus is already set — and flick this lever forward to begin filming, and backward to stop. I’ve loaded extra stock, so we have a total running time of almost fifteen minutes.”
Simone took up her position, glad in a way to have something to do, and watched as Lucas, wearing heavy-duty work gloves, lifted the first chain away from the lid of the ossuary — it allowed for only an inch or two of leeway — and wedged a protective cloth underneath it.
“Start rolling,” he said, and as she put her eye to the viewfinder and pushed the lever forward, she felt the low hum of the spring-wound camera vibrating against her cheek.
Lucas held the chain taut as he watched Delaney, wearing his own gloves, place the blade of the hacksaw to the links. He could hardly believe that this time had come, that within a matter of minutes he would finally know what the ossuary contained. After only a half-dozen strokes, the rusty links gave way, dissolving into a gingery powder.
“Hope it all goes that smoothly,” Delaney said.
“Hear, hear,” Lucas said, noting that his pulse had begun to race. Curiosity was quickly overtaking his anxiety.
The next chain, however, did not yield as easily. It took some persistent sawing to remove it. For the last one, directly positioned over the diamond shape that he had yet to identify, Lucas said, “Let’s switch,” and took the saw into his own hands. This spot was too delicate to risk incurring any damage.
“Be my guest,” said Delaney, lifting the last links as far from the alabaster surface as the chain would allow. “This is your baby.”
Lucas touched the blade to the chain and pulled it back as if he were drawing the bow across a violin. Flakes of rust fell onto the soft rags wedged underneath. He pushed the blade forward again, and this time larger flakes fell, like ashes from an open fire. After several more strokes, the link broke, and the two ends of the chain slithered off of the sarcophagus like snakes racing back to their burrows. One of them coiled over Lucas’s shoe, and he involuntarily shuddered as he kicked it aside.
“Should I keep filming?” Simone said as the two men stood back to assess the next step.
“No, hold on for a second,” Lucas said, retrieving the thin mattress from under the worktable, then wedging it on the floor at the top end of the ossuary. “We’re going to slide the lid off lengthwise. That way, we can support it from both sides all the way.”
“Gotcha,” Delaney said. “Say when.”
Lucas took a deep breath, and got as firm a grip as he could on the smooth white stone. Even through his gloves he could feel how cold it was. After instructing Simone to start rolling again, he said, “On three,” and at the end of the count, he and Delaney gently pushed in the same direction. At first, the lid went nowhere, as though it were riveted in place, and Lucas wondered if it somehow had been. But there were no indications of that — no nails, no bore holes in the sides of the box — so he counted it off again and they both pushed harder. This time, there was a tiny grinding noise, as the accumulated grit of the centuries began to crumble under their exertions.
“At least we know that we can budge it,” Delaney said, brushing grains of sand from his gloves.
Lucas nodded, his gaze fixed on the capering creatures carved along the borders of the lid. For the first time — no doubt it was just the peculiar angle from which he was viewing them — he thought he detected a gleeful expression on one or two.
“Again?” Delaney said, bending slightly to put his shoulder into it.
“Again.”
Together, they pushed the lid farther along the length of the box, fully a foot or two, before they both had to take a breather. The bottom of the interior was now exposed, though even the glare from the surrounding lights somehow failed to penetrate it. Lucas didn’t want to look, anyway. He wanted to wait until the lid was entirely, and safely, removed, and then take in the contents all at once. He checked to see that Simone was following the action, then returned to the task.