The Third Gate (15 page)

Stone nodded. “This ostracon is the key to the biggest—and I mean
the
biggest—archaeological secret in history. It’s why Petrie dropped everything and left his comfortable retirement to undertake a long, dangerous, and ultimately unsuccessful search. It tells us that King Narmer was buried with the
original
two crowns of Egypt: the white and the red.”

22

The senior staff lounge, located down the corridor from Oasis in the Station’s Blue wing, was a space in which the movers and shakers of the expedition could gather for relaxation and friendly chat. The fact that lower-level staff were denied admittance meant that even sensitive aspects of the work could be discussed informally without fear of betraying any secrets.

Jeremy Logan entered the lounge with a distinct feeling of curiosity. He’d been unable to visit it before, but his newfound status with Porter Stone meant that all doors—most, anyway—were now open to him. The lounge was better appointed than the other spaces he’d seen, even Stone’s own office. The walls were covered in a veneer of dark wood, and chairs and sofas of burgundy leather were arranged over thick Turkish rugs. These appointments, along with
the heavy brass lamps, gave the lounge the feeling of an Edwardian men’s club.

Logan put down his duffel on an empty chair and glanced around. Urns of coffee and hot water stood on a long table in the back, along with cucumber sandwiches and madeleines. One wall was lined with bookshelves; the others displayed framed landscapes and sporting prints. He wandered over to the wall of books and briefly scanned their titles. There were numerous current thrillers, lots of nineteenth-century English novels, and biographies, histories, and works of philosophy. In fact, there was everything, it seemed, except anything on Egypt or archaeology. It was almost as if this room was meant as a determined escape from the project at hand. He thought back to the bridge games he’d observed, recalled what Rush had told him about Stone’s belief in diversion from the business at hand.

Three people were sitting around a table, speaking in low tones. Logan saw Fenwick March, Tina Romero, and a cinnamon-haired woman whose back was to him. Tina smiled at him; March gave a curt nod, as if to imply Logan’s presence in the lounge was at the second-in-command’s own sufferance.

Logan chose a magazine at random from one of the tables and sat down, loath to intrude on their conversation, but Tina waved him over. “Come on, Jeremy,” she said. “Maybe you’ll learn something.”

Logan retrieved his duffel and joined the group. As he did so, he saw the face of the other woman. It was Jennifer Rush. Seeing her up close made him briefly go weak at the knees. She had her hair in a severe French twist—precisely the style his own wife had always favored. Except that, even to his hardly objective eyes, Jennifer Rush was far more beautiful. She had an oval face, with high cheekbones and a narrow, sculpted chin, and amber eyes. The combination was exotic, and in a way Logan thought she resembled an Egyptian princess herself.

Jennifer Rush smiled briefly at him. “You must be Dr. Logan,” she said.

“The enigmalogist,” March said. “You two should have a lot in common.” He turned back to Tina Romero. “In any case, I think you and Stone are wrong. We’re not going to find the crown inside the tomb.”

“So you say,” Tina replied. “And what makes you so sure?”

“Because no such thing has ever been found in any tomb.” He leaned forward. “What kinds of things are traditionally discovered in later pharaonic tombs? Offerings of food and drink. Ushabti. Statuary. Jewelry. Gaming pieces. Canopic jars. Funerary offerings. Inscriptions from
The Book of the Dead
. Even boats, for God’s sake. And what do they all have in common? Just one thing: they aid the pharaoh in his journey from our world to the next and they provision him for that next world.” He waved a hand dismissively. “Crowns—they are of
this
world.”

“Sorry, but I don’t buy it,” Tina said. “He would be pharaoh in the next world, just as he had been here. He would need his trappings of power.”

“If that is true, then why have no crowns ever been discovered—even in unlooted tombs?”

“Be as skeptical as you want,” Tina said, her voice a notch higher. “But the fact remains: Narmer went to incredible trouble, unheard-of trouble, to keep his tomb secret. Other First Dynasty pharaohs were content with the mud-brick tombs at Abydos. But not Narmer. His tomb wasn’t even a cenotaph, like the royal tombs at Saqqara—a symbolic grave—it was a goddamn
fake
! Think of the lengths he went to, the dangers he took, the lives he sacrificed, to keep the location of his real burial chamber a secret. So tell me, Fenwick, old boy: If it isn’t the double crown that’s hidden in that tomb—
then what is buried down there beneath the Sudd?
”

And she sat back, a triumphant look on her face.

March looked at her, an arch smile on his lips. “A very good question. What—if anything?”

Tina’s triumphant look morphed into a scowl.

March turned to Jennifer Rush. “But maybe we should be asking
you that question. What secrets have come to you from beyond, pray tell?”

The faint tinge of sarcasm in the archaeologist’s voice was impossible to miss. Nevertheless, Jennifer Rush didn’t rise to the bait. “My findings are confidential between my husband, me, and Dr. Stone,” she replied. “If you want to know more—ask them.”

March waved a hand. “That’s all right. I hope you don’t mind my skepticism, Mrs. Rush—but as an empirical scientist, who bases his beliefs on reproducible evidence, I have a hard time placing much credence in parapsychology and pseudoscience.”

Something in March’s haughtily dismissive attitude got Logan’s goat. “An empirical scientist,” he interjected. “And reproducible evidence might scour that dubious tone from your voice?”

March glanced toward him, as if sizing up a potential opponent. “Naturally.”

“What about Zener cards, then?” Logan said.

For a moment, Jennifer Rush’s eyes fell upon him, before glancing away again.

March frowned. “Zener cards?”

“Otherwise known as Rhine cards. Used in experiments on extrasensory perception.” He pulled his duffel toward him, rummaged in it for a moment, then pulled out a set of oversize cards and showed them to the group. Each held one of five different designs against a white background: a circle, a square, a star, a cross, and three wavy lines.

“Oh. Those.” March rolled his eyes.

Tina laughed. “So
that’s
what the supernatural sleuth carries in his bag of tricks.”

“Among other things.” Logan glanced at Jennifer Rush, motioning with the cards, as if to say:
Do you see where I’m going with this? Are you okay with it?

She shrugged. Taking the cards, Logan moved to a seat between March and Tina so the three of them could see the cards but Jennifer Rush could not.

“I’ll hold up a total of ten cards, one at a time,” Logan told the group. “Mrs. Rush will try to identify them.”

He began by holding up a card with a star on it.

“Circle,” Jennifer Rush said instantly, staring at its back.

Logan held up a second: a card with the wavy lines.

“Cross,” Jennifer Rush said.

A smirk came over March’s face.

Logan took a deep breath. Then he held up a card containing a circle.

“Star.”

With increasing embarrassment, Logan went through the cards. Each time, Jennifer Rush got it wrong. Logan thought back to what her husband had told him: about the Kleiner-Wechsmann scale, about her ranking being the highest of anyone ever tested.
Something’s very wrong here
, he thought. His professional instincts began to sense charlatanism at work.

He put the ten cards facedown on the table. As he did so, he saw Jennifer Rush’s gaze turn to March’s smug expression. For a moment, she was silent. Then she spoke. “They were all wrong, weren’t they?” she said.

“Yes,” Logan replied.

“Once more, please. This time I’ll get them all right.”

Logan picked up the cards, began raising them again, one at a time, in the same order.

“Star,” said Jennifer Rush. “Waves. Circle. Cross. Star. Square.”

It was a flawless performance. Not once did she get a card wrong.

“Holy shit,” Tina Romero muttered.

Now Logan understood. Jennifer Rush had deliberately gotten the cards wrong on the first try. She had rubbed March’s nose in his own skeptical words. It was a bravura performance. Logan looked at the woman with renewed respect.

“Empirical evidence, Dr. March?” he said, turning to the archaeologist. “Care to have the results reproduced?”

“No.” March rose. “I’m not a fan of parlor tricks.” Then, nodding curtly to each of them in turn, he left the lounge.

“What a piece of work that guy is,” Tina said, shaking her head and looking at the door March had just exited through. “And did you hear what he said? ‘What’s buried beneath the Sudd—
if anything
?’ Trust Stone to bring someone like him along as lead archaeologist.”

“You mean March thinks this is all a wild-goose chase?” Logan fell silent. It had never occurred to him that Stone’s fabled research might be flawed—that this entire vast undertaking might be built upon a false assumption.

“Why did Stone hire him, then?” he asked after a moment.

“Because March might be a prick, he might be an intellectual snob, but he’s the best at what he does. Stone’s brilliant that way. Besides, he likes someone who questions his assumptions. Maybe that’s why he likes you.” Tina stood up. “Well, I have to get back to work. If I’m right, March is going to get some news soon that’ll put his nose even more out of joint.” She glanced at Jennifer Rush. “Thanks for the show.” Then she turned to Logan. “You ought to show her your trick with the straw. The two of you may have more in common than you realize.”

Logan watched her leave, then turned back to Jennifer Rush. “I’ve been looking forward to meeting you, Mrs. Rush,” he said.

“Call me Jennifer,” she replied. “My husband has told me about you.”

“He’s told me about you, as well. How you were the inspiration for the Center he founded. And about your remarkable abilities.”

The woman nodded.

“I have to say, your performance with the Zener cards just now—it’s unparalleled in my experience. I’ve overseen the test hundreds of times, but I’ve never seen greater than a seventy, seventy-five percent success rate.”

“I doubt Dr. March has, either,” she replied. She had a low, silky voice that was out of keeping with her small, slender frame.

“If Ethan has told you about me, you probably know that my business is with unusual phenomena, things not easily explained,” he said. “So naturally I’m fascinated with the phenomenon of the NDE, of ‘going over.’ I’ve read the literature, of course, and I know
all about the remarkable consistency in what people encounter: the feeling of peace, the dark tunnel, the being of light. You experienced all those, I assume?”

She nodded.

“But for me, of course, reading and actually experiencing are such different things …” He paused. “As an investigator, it seems I’m always on the outside, looking in after the fact. That’s why I almost envy you—personally undergoing such an extraordinary event, I mean.”

“Extraordinary event,” Jennifer repeated, her voice barely audible. “Yes—you could call it that.”

Logan looked at her closely. In another person, such a reply would have seemed cold, distant. But he sensed something different in her. He sensed unhappiness, a private discomfort. He knew from personal experience that not all gifts were welcome—or even, at times, tolerable. Her amber eyes had a remarkable depth and a curious hard, agate quality. It was as if they had seen things no other human had seen—and, perhaps, that no human being should have.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t know you well enough to speak of such things. Let me just say that I understand the skepticism and disbelief you must face from people like March. I’ve faced it, too. For the record, I believe—and I look forward to working with you.”

Jennifer Rush had been watching him. As he spoke, something in the agate eyes softened slightly. “Thank you,” she said, with a small, gentle smile.

Then—as if with one thought—they rose from their chairs. They stepped toward the door of the lounge; Logan opened it and Jennifer Rush stepped through.

In the hallway, Logan extended his hand for a farewell handshake. After the briefest of delays, she grasped it lightly. As she did so, Logan felt a sudden, searing flash of emotion, so powerful and overwhelming he was almost physically staggered. He withdrew his hand, struggling to conceal his shock. Jennifer Rush hesitated. He ventured a smile, and then—with a disjointed farewell—he turned and made his way down the corridor.

23

“This was three nights ago,” Logan said to the young man operating the airboat.

The man—his name was Hirshveldt—nodded. “It was dusk. I was on the catwalk outside Green, checking the methane-conversion feeder ducts. I dropped a wrench. When I bent down to pick it up, I looked out over the swamp. And I saw … 
her
.”

They were perhaps a quarter mile out from the Station, heading northeast at a painful crawl over the skeletal vegetation of the Sudd. It was a bizarre, arduous trip through several elements—mud, water, bracken, air—as the airboat forced its way through an otherworldly tangle. One minute, they were wallowing in viscous black mud that seemed to suck the vessel downward; the next, they were taking small, jarring leaps over knots of clotted reeds, dead stumps, water hyacinth, and long, whiplike grass. It
was dusk, and a smoky sun was setting into the marshland behind them.

Hirshveldt brought the airboat to a shuddering halt. He looked around, glanced back toward the Station. “It was more or less here.”

Logan nodded, looking at him. He’d read up on Hirshveldt. Machinist Second, he’d been on three prior expeditions with Porter Stone. His expertise was in fixing and running complex mechanical systems of all kinds, with particular emphasis on diesel engines. His psych profile—Stone ran profiles on all prospective employees—showed a very low coefficient of divergent thinking and disinhibition.