His sleep persona told him to focus his mind on the lovely, soothing beauty of the Egyptian artifacts he had helped to uncover and document, and he settled on the image of the crystal skull. A calm peace came over him that nothing, he prayed, could shake.
-2-
Stroud was awakened by the sound of the pilot's voice calling for all passengers to fasten their seat belts, telling everyone of the dismal weather outlook below the blanket of clouds they now skimmed through as they approached Kennedy. A stewardess became solicitous as she passed him, telling him he had slept through dinner.
"I hope you worked right 'round me," he told her.
"Will you be staying over in New York?" she asked, her pert red hair bobbing about an innocent-looking face with huge brown eyes.
"No, I'm going on to Chicago."
"Good ... good, so am I."
"See you on the last leg," he promised.
When they came out of the clouds, Stroud saw a city painted in gray and blue, her streets dappled in slick moisture. Obviously, it had been raining for some time, and the giant that was New York was being irritated now by a steady drizzle, hardly visible in the lack of light filtering through from above her. Above and around them, the underbelly of the clouds reflected the city lights, creating strange shapes in the night sky, shapes that looked like Grecian sculpture.
Stroud was soon watching people pass by and out of the plane, waiting until the place was near empty, as was his habit, before grabbing his carry-on, anxious to get to the rest room where he might shower his tired eyes with water, get a quick shave. He had a two-hour layover, and very little to occupy his time. He'd look for a New York Times, maybe look through the book racks for the latest potboiler by Steve Robertson, his favorite author, whose books always dealt with Chicago cops.
Stroud's mind was filled with ways to keep himself occupied--as he hated a wasted moment--when, coming down the ramp, he realized that he was being met by policemen in uniform. Christ, he wondered, did it have anything to do with the Egyptian incident? He imagined an international ballyhoo over his having been escorted out of the other country.
"Dr. Stroud? Dr. Abraham Stroud?" asked one of the officers.
"I am Stroud, yes. What is it?"
"Would you come with us, sir?"
"To where?" Stroud saw the stewardess he'd spoken to watching the scene, imagining the worst, he supposed.
"There are some people who would like to see you, sir, just outside on the tarmac," he replied, taking him to a window in the ramp. Stroud looked down at the strange entourage of official motorbikes and a limousine. He recognized police brass when he saw it, and this was it, but two men who stood outside the limo, staring up at him from below drenched umbrellas, looked anything but official, and were certainly not like cops he had ever seen before.
"Who are they?"
"C.P. and his aide," said the second cop. "Wants you pronto. Now, can we go?"
"Commissioner of police?"
The commissioner was most certainly inside the limo where it was dry. The two men standing on the tarmac with wet pant legs were dressed in the careless manner of scientists or professors, Stroud thought. One of these men was trying to tie a tie and failing miserably, as if he had either never learned or forgotten how. The other man's pin-striped coat clashed horribly with his brown dungarees.
The cops led Stroud toward their motorbikes and the limousine by going through a service door. One of them announced that his bags were being taken care of. As they approached the limo, the two tacky academician types rushed anxiously forward, each extending a hand to Stroud and telling him they were so glad he could come.
"How did you know I was on the plane?"
"We wired you in Egypt requesting that you come. Didn't you get it?" asked the tall, slender man on Stroud's right.
"No ... no, I left rather abruptly."
One of the two was frail, bony and white-haired, his flesh the color of a lab coat, Stroud thought. He was short but not heavy. The second fellow was tall, perhaps the same age or older, with thin, wispy gray hair and an unkempt mustache, perhaps a bid to make up for the lack of hair on his crown. What hair this one did have on top had been forced in an unnatural wave across the barren area in a hopeless bid to cover the desert. At the nape of his neck, the hair curled in a wild arch and was in need of trimming. The tall fellow tore off his glasses and said, "I am Dr. Samuel Leonard of the American Museum--"
"And I am Wisnewski," said the shorter, wiry little man beside him with a booming voice. "Thank you for coming."
"I honestly had no choice," Stroud was saying when he realized whom he was talking to. "Leonard? Wisnewski? I ... I've read your books--"
"Good!"
"--on Etruscan discoveries."
"Indeed," said Wisnewski. "I am curator of the New York Museum of Antiquities."
"Dr. Arthur T. Wisnewski, I know," said Stroud. "I'm overwhelmed ... So glad to meet you, gentlemen."
"And we, you!" replied Leonard.
Wisnewski begged, "Please call me Wiz ... everyone does."
"But what's this all about? Why're you here? And why the commissioner of police?"
"Well, that will take some explaining, and we have you standing in the rain. Please come with us," said the man calling himself Wiz.
As they approached the waiting vehicle a man in a three-piece suit climbed from it, coming toward them. "Gentlemen! Gentlemen!" he called in a tone that mocked the term. "We can't keep the C.P. waiting forever." The limo's trunk was popped and Stroud's bag put in by the driver, who'd jumped out with the aide.
"I am Lloyd Perkins, Dr. Stroud, the C.P.'s aide. Anything I can get for you while you're in the city--"
"C.P. of the NYPD, that'd be James Nathan, wouldn't it?" Stroud cut him off.
"It would. Now, if you'll join us, Dr. Stroud?"
"Yes, of course, but I'm not sure I can be of any assistance to New York."
"I agree one hundred percent," said the aide, "but who am I?"
"Yes!" shouted Wiz. "Who are you, Mr. Perkins?"
"Well said," added Leonard.
Leonard, Wisnewski and Stroud got into the limo, but when Perkins poked his head in, the huge man who was the commissioner of police of the largest city in the country said, "Lloyd, you'll ride with one of the squad cars. I need a moment alone with these gentlemen."
Perkins looked piqued, but he did as he was told without a word, closing the door on the foursome. James Nathan asked Stroud, "How was your flight, Doctor?"
"Restful, fine."
"How very good. You will need your rest. Would you care for a drink from the bar?"
"I would much rather have some answers."
Nathan laughed lightly, without meaning. "Yes, of course. Dr. Leonard and Dr. Wisnewski will bring you up to date. Suffice it to say that I have had you checked out with the CPD and the commissioner there, and from what I am told no one else may be as qualified to deal with this ... this outbreak as you."
"Outbreak?"
"It's like a curse," said Leonard.
"Remember when King Tut's burial chamber was disturbed and everyone connected with the find died mysteriously after?"
"A curse?" asked Stroud again. "Like that of King Tut's? Here in New York City?"
"We fear so," said Leonard, who fixed himself a bourbon. Leonard's leathery yet white skin made him look ill and weary-worn. "Wiz and I have been up all night with this thing."
"What exactly is this thing?"
"A few months ago construction began on a new building in Manhattan," said Nathan.
"Was to be the biggest building on the face of the earth," added Wiz.