Robert W. Walker (4 page)

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.

Leonard, shaking his head after a sip on his bourbon, said disparagingly, "Another steel and glass temple glorifying mankind."

"At any rate, the foundation moldings and pylons had to be sunk deeper than anything built in the city before," continued Wiz.

Stroud hadn't heard a word about either the building or the construction or anything that'd come of it, but it stood to reason. "You've made a discovery?" he asked.

"More than a discovery, an incredible find, Stroud," said Wiz, his small eyes glinting with suppressed excitement. "We've found a ship, but not just any ship."

"A buried ship?
Beneath Manhattan?"

"Exactly, but also a ship like none that has ever before been found, an Etruscan ship."

Of course, it explained why the two top Etruscan men were involved. "There's never before been an Etruscan ship unearthed.
Remarkable, fantastic."

"Not altogether, Stroud," said Leonard shakily.

"This curse you mention?"

He nodded, drank more.

"Tell me more about the curse."

"Protecting the ship, perhaps ... we can't be sure," said Wiz, his round hands circling one another.
"Or for some other reason."

"What possible other reason?" asked Leonard. "It must've been a sacred ship, and so--"

"Assumptions, assumptions, Doctor! We must have more than assumptions."

"What else is the purpose of a curse?"

"Gentlemen!" shouted Nathan, bringing some order to the discussion, the limousine well out of the confines of the airport now. "You have not convinced anyone there is a curse, and as for me, I do not wish to be the brunt of political savagery or comedy in the press, so please ... and you, too, Stroud, please watch what you say and how you say it."

"Is the press aware of the situation?"

"Only to the extent that some archeological treasures have been located below the
site,
and that some mysterious goings-on have occurred at the site."

"What kind of goings-on?" asked
Stroud.

"We'll supply you with all the information you need. Seems a guard and an old man stumbled on the thing first and came out the worse for wear," said Nathan.

"The worse for wear?"

"They're hospitalized now in something like a sleep or coma," said Leonard as he twirled what remained in the bottom of his glass, staring at it.

"Like a pair of zombies," said Wiz. "We theorize--and it's only a theory--that when the seal to the crypt in which the ship was encased was broken, something
leaked
out."

"Leaked?"

"Spores, a germ perhaps," said Leonard. "We can't be sure yet, but we are working on this
assumption
at least, aren't we, Wiz?"

"It's not uncommon for a sealed crypt to leak deadly gases, germs or spores, no," said Wiz, "and in the end it was ruled a deadly spore that got the Tut people, as we've explained to Nathan here. Of course, we can't rule this possibility out, and I have lab technicians searching for this."

"I presume, then, that all safety precautions have been taken?" asked Stroud.

"Presume away."

"Are you taking me to the site now?"

"I presumed that it would be your first choice. We can show you
slides
later."

Stroud and Wiz continued their discussion as if the other two men were not present.

"Photos?"

"Photos, yes, and film."

"All the mapping has started?"

"Only at a snail's pace.
We haven't many volunteers. The press has played up the 'zombie curse' aspect of the find, and the families of the two men are suing the construction company as though that might help."

"So you're working with a skeleton crew?"

"I tell you, Stroud, even the lab people are fearful of this thing. If it is a bug, any one of us could contract it."

"You seem skeptical that it is a bug."

"I was born skeptical.
Force of habit, occupational hazard.
How on earth did an Etruscan ship get to America in the first place? Why did it sail here? We know nothing. Only that the ship predates Greek and Roman culture! Was it set adrift with the body of a king inside it? No, for it was deliberately brought here and encased in a crypt of stone below the earth in what would have been, by all accounts, an unknown and unpopulated land. Why? How? Who did the ship belong to? Why were his remains encased here instead of Etruria? Why? This is all we know so far, and so, we know nothing."

Stroud mentally ran the gamut of what he knew of Etruria. The origins of the people known as Etruscans remained obscure. No Etruscan records or literature had ever been found, but no lack of speculation existed about the mysterious race that did battle with Greece and Rome, teaching the peoples of these great cultures the art of war and statesmanship. The speculation on the Etruscans began with ancient records and documents of the Romans and the Greeks that told of a place called Etruria, an ancient place of great power on the Italian peninsula.

"At the time of the Etruscans' greatest power, about the seventh to fifth centuries
b.c
., Etruria embraced all of Italy from the Alps to the Tiber River," said
Wisnewski
, as if reading Stroud's thoughts. "Etruria as a name derives from the Latin version of the Greek name
Tyrrhenia
or
Tyrsenia
,
and the ancient Romans called the stocky, olive-skinned people
Tusci
.
"

"Present-day Tuscany," added Leonard.

"Of course archeology has shed some light on the Etruscans from discoveries along the coastal land of Tuscany."

"The first settlements,
Vetulonia
and Tarquinii, have been dated as ninth century
b.c
."

"They were eventually overcome by war with Rome."

"Anything new on their religion?" asked Stroud.

"Some of the names of their gods survive, but the exact functions of each remains unknown. Many were adaptations from ancient Mesopotamian countries," replied Leonard.

Wiz cleared his throat and added, "Certain late-Roman writers believed--or tried desperately to believe--that certain of their deities were counterparts to their own, such as Jupiter, Juno and Minerva, by calling attention to
Tinis
,
Uni
and
Menrva
respectively."