Krewe of Hunters 7 The Unspoken (9 page)

He nodded eagerly. “The Old Kingdom, which would be roughly the third millennium, leading up to the New Kingdom, the Greek and Roman periods, and then invasion by what we consider more or less modern Europeans. Ramses II, or Ramses the Great, was a nineteenth dynasty king and ruled from 1279 to 1213 BC.”

“Yeah, he was a warrior king, and very nicely played by Yul Brynner in the old movie,” Kat said. “He was considered a magnificent general and a good ruler, whether he did or didn’t lose half his men when the Red Sea fell back after Moses. So Amun Mopat, as his high priest, is of tremendous interest to scholars.” She grinned. “Those poor people in the Sand Diggers must have been cringing when the movie
Sam Stone and the Curious Case of the Egyptian Museum
was originally made. A number of liberties were taken.”

“Maybe they were upset, maybe not. Maybe they were happy to see some interest—any interest—in ancient Egypt. And maybe they enjoyed sharing their information. Just as they were probably happy to correct everyone when the press got it all wrong reporting on your last case in California.”

“You know about that?”

He laughed. “I read the papers. Usually online, which means the New York, L.A., Chicago and London papers. I know the FBI is downplaying our part in the Hollywood case as much as possible, but if you’re with a Krewe…well, you read between the lines. And I guess it must be somewhat disconcerting to go from Amun Mopat to…Amun Mopat.”

“It’s what we do, right?” She smiled, aware that she was paraphrasing an earlier remark of his.

“Yeah, it’s what we do. And I love Egyptology,” he said. “I’m looking forward to seeing the artifacts on that ship.
Especially
the mummy.”

“I’m used to the dead. But I’ve never been asked to examine the remains of a mummy, although I know pathologists who have. I believe in speaking for the dead, but…I think my sympathies are with the people who died on the ship, rather than a priest who apparently lived well and had many convinced that he was all-powerful.”

“And Brady Laurie?” he asked quietly.

“I know we’re learning more about him. That he was determined to follow through on his discovery and that he might have had a temper and—in short—been human.” She paused. “I really wanted his death to be an accident.”

“But you don’t buy that any more than I do,” he said.

“No,” she admitted.

“Okay, we’ll figure out what went on,” Will said solemnly. “And I’m intrigued by this group. Neither Amanda Channel nor Jon Hunt at the Preservation Center mentioned them to me. Then again, maybe they just dismiss them as amateurs.”

“Yes, but the Sand Diggers are also avid—and scholarly,” Kat said. “And apparently they do good works.”

“Do we know where to find them?”

“Their meeting house is on Michigan Avenue,” she told him. “We can start there, and if we don’t find the two men Landry mentioned—Austin Miller and Dirk Manning—we can get information on their schedules. I’m sure Logan sent me their home addresses. I’ll go through the notes again.”

“Then I say we head over there after a lovely morning of diving!” Will said. “Hey, come on. How often will you see a freshly discovered shipwreck and treasure so far untouched?”

Only in my dreams,
Kat thought
. Only in my…dreams.

She realized that she dreaded seeing the
Jerry McGuen.

No.

She dreaded discovering that she’d already seen it.

5

K
at remembered meeting Alan King, Bernie Firestone and Earl Candy in Texas, when she was involved in the case at the Longhorn Saloon. They’d been helpful, and they were interesting people—and friends of Sean Cameron’s. She’d seen more of Bernie and Earl, but when the case came to its conclusion, she, Logan and the others had dinner with the group, and she’d enjoyed their company.

They all met at the docks. It was decided that Kat and Will would go out on the film crew’s boat and meet up with the Preservation Center’s boat at the dive site. Today’s dive would be on video, from beginning to end.

Kat was glad. That meant lots of people in the water.

And it meant that
everything
would be on video.

Bernie Firestone was a man of about forty, pleasant, with graying hair and warm brown eyes. He greeted Kat with a crushing hug and called out to his main cameraman, “Earl! Dr. Sokolov is here. Agent Sokolov these days, right?”

“Yes, Bernie. Hey, Earl!”

She received an equally warm hug from Earl. He was stocky and shaggy-haired and reminded her of a teddy bear.

She’d only met Alan King, the billionaire producer, once, but he, too, was friendly when they greeted each other. Alan didn’t look or behave like her idea of such a wealthy man. At the moment, he was in swim trunks and a worn T-shirt and his cap of white hair was unruly in the breeze.

He shook hands with her and Will, and thanked them for being there.

“Happy to,” she murmured, feeling somewhat guilty. She didn’t tell him that it hadn’t been her choice.

“Amanda and Jon haven’t arrived yet. You want to come into the cabin and have some coffee?” he asked.

“Sure, more coffee sounds great,” Will said.

Kat wondered about the wisdom of that, considering they’d be spending time in dive suits, but she supposed one more cup couldn’t hurt, and they’d have a chance to talk with the filmmakers for a few minutes.

The filmmakers had hired a charter out of Chicago, and the cabin wasn’t luxurious but comfortable and well-appointed. The charter came with Captain Bob Green, who looked like he could’ve been whaling in New England a century earlier, and first mate Jimmy Green, his nephew, an eager young man in his early twenties. They went about their business on the boat, apparently unfazed by any rumors of a curse.

“You’ve had private security watching the site since Brady Laurie was brought up, right?” Will asked as they sat at the galley table and Bernie got them coffee.

Alan King nodded.

“And?”

“Nothing. Well, boats on the lake, but nothing at the dive site,” Alan said. “Thing is—it’s a dive site. We can’t station people 24/7 down at the wreck. And we can’t stop other boats from being out on the lake. My people have reported curious boaters going by, but they just see them looking over, then moving on. Someone with the right equipment could anchor at another spot and go beneath the surface.”

“That’s true, but not so easy. You have to know how to dive, and you have to allow for air consumption,” Will pointed out.

“It’s not
that
deep,” Earl Candy said, sitting next to Kat. “I was worried about this project, but you don’t have to go below a hundred feet. When you think about it, it could have been a lot worse.”

Alan turned to Kat. “You’re a pathologist, Kat. You saw Brady Laurie. Are we being alarmists?
Did
he die by accident? We were down there, you know, when his body was discovered.”

She hesitated. “Mr. King, I can’t say for sure. There were some suspicious marks on the body that mean an investigation is in order.”

“I heard a talk-radio show today.” Alan sniffed impatiently. “The host had on half a dozen people who were convinced the ‘curse’ is real—that Amun Mopat hadn’t wanted his tomb raided way back when, and that he doesn’t want his watery grave disturbed. Half the guests on the show were convinced that Brady Laurie was killed by Amun Mopat.”

“If there’s one thing I’ll say
didn’t
happen—it’s that a mummy came out of a sealed container and killed a guy!” Bernie said. Then he sighed. “But it doesn’t mean that evil isn’t alive. We all know it is. Evil exists in psychopaths the world over.”

“Bernie, could you show me what kind of equipment you’re working with?” Will asked. “Were you able to get the remotes I suggested?”

Bernie nodded. “Anything I film will show up on the screen over there,” Bernie said, pointing at the console.

“We can rig up a remote camera, too, for when no one’s down there?”

“I got the little remote casing yesterday afternoon,” Bernie said. “Yeah, we can watch whatever goes on,” he assured Will.

“And we have a videographer coming in from the Keys. He’s done underwater work all over the world, so we’ll be in good shape,” Alan King told them.

Jimmy Green came halfway down the ladder to the cabin. “Your scientists are here, and they’re getting ready to head out.”

“Then we’re ready to follow,” Alan said.

Forty-five minutes later, they were at the dive site. They linked up with Alan King’s security boat, a little cabin cruiser. The two men aboard looked more like surfers than security; they were both young and muscular, wearing swim trunks and Ts.

“All is well?” Alan called to them. The taller of the two gave him a thumbs-up.

To the east of them, the Preservation Center’s boat drifted close, then anchored.

Kat realized that Will was standing next to her. He’d begun crawling into his wet suit and squeezed his arms and torso inside as he spoke softly to her. “The woman is Amanda Channel and her partner is Jon Hunt. They’re the two main Egyptologists at the center.”

“The two who found Brady Laurie,” she whispered.

“Yes.”

“Yoo-hoo!” Amanda sang out across the water. “We’re going to do an assessment dive. We’ve got some netting and collection bags, and we’ll probably pick up a few small pieces if we find any. Tomorrow, we’ll bring the cranes and wrenches and go for the crates.”

“All right, we’re ready,” Alan shouted. “But Jimmy Green is going down with us as dive master. We’ve had one death down there. Jimmy will be along for safety. When he says it’s time to come up, it’s time to come up. We can make a second dive this afternoon for more logistics and cataloging.”

Amanda said something to Jon; she clearly wasn’t happy about being told how to dive a wreck, even if her coworker had just died.

Kat started to gather her equipment. Earl was already suited up; Captain Bob was helping him with his tank, a distraction that didn’t seem to bother Earl as he was busy rolling video. She hurriedly got into her booties, suit and slippers, added her weight belt, then checked her tank, opening the air gauge.

She’d tested it as recently as this morning.

Sitting, she slid into her BCV, which was attached to the tank. Jimmy came by to give her a hand up. The last thing she saw before she dived backward into the lake was Earl—filming her as she held her mask and light in place and went in.

Even wearing a full neoprene wet suit, gloves and booties beneath her flippers, Kat felt the shock of Lake Michigan’s water the moment she hit the surface.

Because other divers were descending with her, she could see a strange array of colors as beams from the flashlights they wore strapped around their heads were darting in a number of directions. It seemed that a stream of dust motes—tiny bits of lake growth and remnants of anything left behind—danced in the shades of blue and green.

At thirty-three feet they made their first safety stop. Then again, at sixty-six.

Kat swallowed hard, clearing her ears.

They followed the anchor rope down. There were eight of them in all—dive master Jimmy Green, the three men working on the documentary, Amanda Channel and Jon Hunt, and Will and Kat. She tried to sort out who was who by the colors of their dive suits. It wasn’t difficult to find Will; she could see his dark hair streaming like a strange halo around his head.

She released more air from her BCV, and her weight belt kicked in, helping to carry her ever deeper.

And then…

They were there.

When the massive hull of the
Jerry McGuen
first appeared, she had to admit it was an impressive sight. Long sea grass undulated around the ship’s rusting hulk, along with denizens of the lake.

Despite storm damage and years of resting at the bottom, covered by silt, sand and muck, the
Jerry McGuen
still retained a majesty, a splendor. The hull was broken or rusted in many places. It was almost like looking at a stage or film set, Kat decided, because she could see into the grand salon and into what had once been elegant staterooms.

Amanda was in the lead, moving toward the cargo hold.

Kat found herself pausing by the grand salon. For a moment, she felt a sense of déjà vu that was almost overwhelming.

The massive staircase could still be seen. Pieces of glass from the wrecked chandelier were strewn about, picking up the divers’ lights and glinting strangely on the shipwreck. Kat began mentally restoring the salon to its former grandeur—and thought she could see men and women in elegant bygone dress, sashaying along the floor.

Surely, she saw the couple who’d walked by her in the dream!

The room was at an angle in the thick muck of the lake bed, but her imaginary people floated along….

She felt and heard a tap on her tank and turned around. Will was studying her, his eyes piercing behind the glass of his mask. She gave a thumbs-up and followed him toward the others, who hovered around the hold.

The people she’d seen in her dream were long gone, if they had ever existed; predators, small and large, at the bottom of the lake effectively made sure of that.

Crates in some kind of tarps, astonishingly intact after all the years and the brutal effects of the cold water, were wedged here and there. Earl Candy watched as the divers made their way through the broken-out hull to view the contents.

The hold was massive; some watertight doors to other compartments stood ajar, while others remained closed. Bags of ballast sand had split apart in places, and smaller boxes and crates had shattered.

Something sparkled in the lake silt that now covered the floor of the hull. Kat was beside Will and touched his arm lightly before diving down to see what it was.

He followed her. Whatever glimmered was covered with growth, but Kat began to carefully dust away the sand, silt and zebra mussels. Will helped her, pausing for a moment to gesture at a metal box nearby that had opened. He moved to collect the box and returned, pointing at the lid. She realized it was thick, heavy wood and had withstood pressure, cold and water to survive. Of course, the lake, being freshwater, didn’t have the bore worms that ate away at wooden artifacts that went down in the oceans and salt seas.

There were hieroglyphics still faintly discernible on the box. Will slid it into the netted bag he’d carried down, attached to his weight belt. She continued to work at the object that seemed imbedded in the ground. At last, still covered with grit and slime, it came free.

It was a dagger. And it would have fit perfectly into the box Will had retrieved.

She handed it to him, and he added it to the bag. Earl Candy turned the camera on the two of them. Will waved to the camera; she did the same.

Then Earl tapped his dive watch, pointing across the hold. Kat saw that Jimmy had tapped on his tank, informing them that they were to surface.

Will nodded. Earl gave a kick and went over to Amanda and Jon, who were working with waterproof charts, cataloging everything they saw. Amanda looked stubbornly at her own watch, but Jon sent her a fierce frown.

None of them could—or should—forget Brady Laurie.

They made the appropriate stops, using the anchor chain as their guide. As they surfaced, they all returned to Captain Bob’s boat.

Jimmy came up first and was soon ready to help the other divers shed their gear.

For a while, the conversation was excited and coming from everyone at once.

“Oh, my God! It’s spectacular!” Amanda was saying.

“There’s so much left!” Jon agreed.

“Definitely a historic moment,” Alan said.

“I got really great film. My God, when it just suddenly appears there in the green darkness, it’s
awesome!
” Earl was already filming them on deck as they talked about the discovery.

“Look what I brought up!” Amanda said, walking toward him. She had a box of specially treated cloths and she took one, using it to lift one of the little objects she’d found. “Thank God stone preserves so well! These are what they call
shabti
statues. Some tombs had over four hundred of them. They represent slaves or workers who would do menial tasks for kings and priests who passed into new lives. They’re very hard to see clearly now, because they have to be cleaned. We’re setting them in water again until we get them to the center for proper preservation.”

“We found a box and a dagger,” Will volunteered, taking one of the specially treated cloths Amanda had used before reaching into his net bag. “I can’t read hieroglyphics, but whatever dye they used to stain the box is still visible. And the dagger appears to be jewel-encrusted. There’s shell attached, but I assume the center will know what to do.”

“You found
that?
” Amanda asked.

“I found the box. Kat found the dagger,” Will said.

“And you
touched
them?” Amanda asked incredulously. She spun around, telling Earl, “Get that camera off now!” She pushed him when he didn’t move quickly enough. She whirled to face Will and Kat. “This is an historic expedition. What’s the matter with you? You are not trained or equipped to handle treasure!”

Will’s face didn’t betray an ounce of emotion. “Dr. Channel,” he said, “I may not have your training, but I’ve dived many a wreck. We were gloved down there, just as you were. If you’re disappointed that the value of the dagger outweighs that of the three
shabti
pieces, I’m sorry. But you will not be able to do this on your own, and if I understand correctly, you barely have permission from the State of Illinois to control this dive site. Only Alan King’s promise of a complete record of the event has allowed you to rush it through. And Mr. King has asked us to work along with you. I’m sorry if this disturbs any of your proprietary feelings about the search, but we are here, we will remain here, and if we’re able to find any artifacts—which will go into the same cache as those you bring up yourself—we will continue to do so.”