“Yes, yes. I know. You’re sooooo ruggedly handsome.”
Storm brought a bandana to his face, dampening it with the sweat that was forming on his brow and lip. “Look, we’re here, okay? And I don’t know if you noticed, but this appears to be the only thing in the target-zone radius that’s not a pile of sand. The promethium might well have been discovered here.”
“By a bunch of archaeologists?”
“Or maybe by the people who were here before the archaeologists, I don’t know. But, as you so vividly pointed out, there is a lot of excavation going on here. People who dig in the Earth tend to find things down there. Maybe things like promethium.”
Strike uncrossed her arms, grabbed a water bottle, and took a swig. Storm could tell she was softening.
“Look, if you’ve got a better idea than hanging out here, I’m all for hearing it,” Storm said. “But at the moment, I think this is our best bet. At the very least, I’m sure we can protect them from these bandits that are supposedly roving around out here. Who knows? Maybe the bandits are the ones behind it. Or maybe there are Medina Society members embedded here at the dig site, pretending to be part of the expedition when really they’re secreting out the promethium every time they return to civilization? There are a host of possibilities.”
Strike fingered the water bottle. “Okay, so what are you proposing?”
“First off, we maintain the cover of being Talbot and Sullivan from the International Art Protection League. There seems to be a lot going on tonight. You shadow Professor Plumb—”
“Professor Raynes.”
“Yeah, whatever. As I was saying, you stick with him, see if you can work your charms on him to figure out what’s really going on. Pay attention to the natives, too. They’re the ones who are doing the heavy lifting, as Katie pointed out. But it still seems like Raynes is the head honcho of this dig site, so he’ll probably know about anything that’s been happening here. Meanwhile, I’ll hang out with Dr. Comely.”
“Terrible sacrifice for you that it is,” Strike said, narrowing her eyes.
Storm did his best to look virtuous. “Why, Mrs. Sullivan, I’m sure I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
THE FEROCIOUS SUN HAD FINALLY BEGUN to settle in the sky, flooding the desert with mysterious reds and complex yellows. The sand released its heat with the same kind of speed it had soaked it up in the morning. And at the dig site, the teams of grad students, postdocs, professors, and local workers had shifted back into an active state.
“We basically have two work sessions a day,” Katie Comely was explaining to Storm, who was patiently following behind her. “We’re up before first light so we can take advantage of the morning hours. We take a siesta in the middle of the day. And then we work again at night, usually at least a few hours after sunset.”
“When do the bandits strike?” Storm asked.
“The morning. It’s almost like they know when we have something really valuable. I think one of the workers is tipping them off, probably getting paid for the information. But I don’t know which one, and my Arabic isn’t very good yet, so it’s hard for me to make any headway in that area.”
“And when they come, it’s…on camels? In dune buggies? What?”
“Pickup trucks. They need the trucks to haul off our stuff. You can see them coming from a ways off, but there seems to be nothing we can do to defend ourselves. It’s so disheartening. The professor has hired security, but they turn tail and run without firing a shot.”
“Who are these bandits? Do you know anything about them?”
“Well, they cover their faces, of course. They’re just…locals, I guess. Desperate locals. Egypt’s economy has been in a real tailspin with all the political instability. Unemployment has spiked. Sometimes I wish I spoke better Arabic so I could talk to them. There has to be a way to get them to stop what they’re doing. Maybe we could hire them to provide security for us, you know? Pay them protection money. Either that, or maybe I could convince them to, I don’t know, find someone else to rob.”
Katie had led him to the entrance of the tomb and was about to go underground when she paused.
“Oh my goodness, do you hear that?” she said.
Storm stopped behind her and tuned his ears to a sweet chirping sound. It was at once angelic and strangely uplifting, like nothing Storm had ever heard.
“What is that?” Storm asked, finally focusing on the small, yellow bird making the sound.
“That,” Katie said, “is a very rare sight, indeed. That’s a Jameson’s Finch.”
“It’s lovely.”
“Egyptians believe it’s extraordinary good luck to see a Jameson’s Finch,” she said. “It’s like the American equivalent of a rabbit’s foot, a horseshoe, and a four-leaf clover, all in one. People who see a Jameson’s Finch are said to be on the brink of something very fortunate happening to them. The bird originally had a number of names. No one could seem to agree what to call it. Pharaohs actually kept the finches at their palaces so they could enjoy the songs. We’ve found mummified finches in the tombs of pharaohs who couldn’t bear the thought of going to the afterlife without their favorite songbird.”
“Poor bird.”
“Actually, what made it a poor bird is that they were being hunted to extinction. These finches have a very narrow migratory path, stopping at just a few spots on their journey from the tip of South Africa up to Egypt each year. It made them an easy target for poachers.
“Then Jameson Rook, the famed magazine journalist, wrote a major story about the bird’s plight and how it was going the way of the carrier pigeon if no one stepped in. Several governments in Africa, which normally couldn’t agree on anything — even what name to give the finches — banned hunting of the finches and also set up some sanctuaries for them. And the finches’ numbers rebounded to the point where they’re now no longer considered endangered, merely threatened. The Egyptians were so thrilled not to lose the bird, they officially renamed it Jameson’s Finch, in Mr. Rook’s honor.”
Storm listened to the bird’s song, then mimicked it, pursing his lips and tweeting back at it in its own lilting song.
“Wow, that’s pretty impressive,” Katie said. “Maybe you’re good luck, too?”
“We’ll just have to hope so,” Storm said.
As they went underground, she began narrating the history of the dig site — how it had been discovered by Professor Raynes, using his advanced seismographic techniques; how a rotating team of archaeologists had been unearthing treasures from it for a year now; and then how she had happened upon the hollow stone and the hidden tunnel underneath.
Storm listened with half an ear. He was keeping an eye out for anything that seemed out of place or anyone acting strangely. For whatever he had said to Strike, he wasn’t totally convinced the dig site had anything to do with the promethium. But it made sense to act as if it did. There was no downside of being wrong, and potentially great benefits to his investigation if he was right.
So he studied everything and everyone with great care. Even Katie Comely. If the Medina Society really was as clever as everyone thought, it very well might be using a fresh-scrubbed American girl as an operative.
Storm kept asking questions, being careful to stay true to his cover. The passageway Katie was leading him down had been widened and reinforced to prevent cave-in. Storm was able to walk — albeit in a crouch — down into the lowest tomb. Once there, Storm could stand. They had set up temporary lights that set the whole place aglow.
“Up until just a few days ago, it’s very possible no human beings had laid eyes on any of this for five thousand years,” Katie said, pointing out some of the hieroglyphics on the walls.
“And this,” she finished, “is the mummy I’ve been calling Bouchard. Note the way his arms are crossed. Note how intricately the linen was bound around him and the care that was taken with every detail. We won’t know until we unwrap him, but my guess is we’ll find a very painstaking embalming. There’s no doubt in my mind this was a pharaoh. But we have to be able to get it back to the lab so we can study it adequately.”