The Book of the Dead (7 page)

O
n the morning appointed for opening the sealed Tomb of Senef, Nora arrived in Menzies’s capacious office to find him sitting in his usual wing chair, in conversation with a young man. They both rose as she came in.

“Nora,” he said. “This is Dr. Adrian Wicherly, the Egyptologist I mentioned to you. Adrian, this is Dr. Nora Kelly.”

Wicherly turned to her with a smile, a thatch of untidy brown hair the only eccentricity in his otherwise perfectly dressed and groomed person. At a glance, Nora took in the understated Savile Row suit, the fine wing tips, the club tie. Her sweep came to rest on an extraordinarily handsome face: dimpled cheeks, flashing blue eyes, and perfect white teeth. He was, she thought, no more than thirty.

“Delighted to meet you, Dr. Kelly,” he said in an elegant Oxbridge accent. He clasped her hand gently, blessing her with another dazzling smile.

“A pleasure. And please call me Nora.”

“Of course. Nora. Forgive my formality—my stuffy upbringing has left me rather hamstrung this side of the pond. I just want to say how smashing it is to be here, working on this project.”

Smashing. Nora suppressed a smile—Adrian Wicherly was almost a caricature of the dashing young Brit, of a type she didn’t think even existed outside P. G. Wodehouse novels.

“Adrian comes to us with some impressive credentials,” Menzies said. “D.Phil. from Oxford, directed the excavation of the tomb KV 42 in the Valley of the Kings, university professor of Egyptology at Cambridge, author of the monograph
Pharaohs of the XX Dynasty
.”

Nora looked at Wicherly with fresh respect. He was amazingly young for an archaeologist of such stature. “Very impressive.”

Wicherly put on a self-deprecating face. “A lot of academic rubbish, really.”

“It’s hardly that.” Menzies glanced at his watch. “We’re meeting someone from the Maintenance Department at ten. As I understand it, nobody knows quite precisely where the Tomb of Senef is anymore. The one certainty is that it was bricked up and has been inaccessible ever since. We’re going to have to break our way in.”

“How intriguing,” said Wicherly. “I feel rather like Howard Carter.”

They descended in an old brass elevator, which creaked and groaned its way to the basement. They emerged in the Maintenance Section and threaded a complex path through the machine shop and carpentry, at last arriving at the open door of a small office. Inside, a small man sat at a desk, poring over a thick press of blueprints. He rose as Menzies rapped on the door frame.

“I’d like to introduce you both to Mr. Seamus McCorkle,” said Menzies. “He probably knows more about the layout of the museum than anyone alive.”

“Which still isn’t saying much,” said McCorkle. He was an elvish man in his early fifties with a fine Celtic face and a high, whistling voice. He pronounced the final word
mitch
.

After completing the introductions, Menzies turned back to McCorkle. “Have you found our tomb?”

“I believe so.” McCorkle nodded at the slab of old blueprints. “It’s not easy, finding things in this old pile.”

“Why ever not?” Wicherly asked.

McCorkle began rolling up the top blueprint. “The museum consists of thirty-four interconnected buildings, with a footprint of more than six acres, over two million square feet of space, and eighteen miles of corridors—and that’s not even counting the sub-basement tunnels, which no one’s ever surveyed or diagrammed. I once tried to figure out how many rooms there were in this joint, gave up when I hit a thousand. It’s been under constant construction and renovation for every single one of its hundred and forty years. That’s the nature of a museum—collections get moved around, rooms get joined together, others get split apart and renamed. And a lot of these changes are made on the fly, without blueprints.”

“But surely they couldn’t lose an entire Egyptian tomb!” said Wicherly.

McCorkle laughed. “That would be difficult, even for this museum. It’s finding the entrance that might be tricky. It was bricked up in 1935 when they built the connecting tunnel from the 81st Street subway station.” He tucked the blueprints under his arm and picked up an old leather bag that lay on his desk. “Shall we?”

“Lead the way,” said Menzies.

They set off along a puke-green corridor, past maintenance rooms and storage areas, through a heavily trafficked section of the basement. As they went along, McCorkle gave a running account. “This is the metal shop. This is the old physical plant, once home to the ancient boilers, now used to store the collection of whale skeletons. Jurassic dinosaur storage… Cretaceous… Oligocene mammals… Pleistocene mammals… dugongs and manatees…”

The storage areas gave way to laboratories, their shiny, stainless-steel doors in contrast to the dingy corridors, lit with caged lightbulbs and lined with rumbling steam pipes.

They passed through so many locked doors Nora lost count. Some were old and required keys, which McCorkle selected from a large ring. Other doors, part of the museum’s new security system, he opened by swiping a magnetic card. As they moved deeper into the fabric of the building, the corridors became progressively empty and silent.

“I daresay this place is as vast as the British Museum,” said Wicherly.

McCorkle snorted in contempt. “Bigger.
Much
bigger.”

They came to an ancient set of riveted metal doors, which McCorkle opened with a large iron key. Darkness yawned beyond. He hit a switch and illuminated a long, once-elegant corridor lined with dingy frescoes. Nora squinted: they were paintings of a New Mexico landscape, with mountains, deserts, and a multistoried Indian ruin she recognized as Taos Pueblo.

“Fremont Ellis,” said Menzies. “This was once the Hall of the Southwest. Shut down since the forties.”

“These are extraordinary,” said Nora.

“Indeed. And very valuable.”

“They’re rather in need of curation,” said Wicherly. “That’s a rather nasty stain, there.”

“It’s a question of money,” Menzies said. “If our count hadn’t stepped forward with the necessary grant, the Tomb of Senef would probably have been left to sleep for another seventy years.”

McCorkle opened another door, revealing another dim hall turned into storage, full of shelves covered with beautifully painted pots. Old oaken cabinets stood against the walls, fronted with rippled glass, revealing a profusion of dim artifacts.

“The Southwest collections,” McCorkle said.

“I had no idea,” said Nora, amazed. “These should be available for study.”

“As Adrian pointed out, they need to be curated first,” Menzies said. “Once again, a question of money.”

“It’s not only money,” McCorkle added, with a strange, pinched expression on his face.

Nora exchanged glances with Wicherly. “I’m sorry?” she asked.

Menzies cleared his throat. “I think what Seamus means is that the, ah, first Museum Beast killings happened in the vicinity of the Hall of the Southwest.”

In the silence that followed, Nora made a mental note to have a look at these collections later—preferably, in the company of a large group. Maybe she could write a grant to see them moved to updated storage.

Another door gave way to a smaller room, lined floor-to-ceiling with black metal drawers. Half hidden behind the drawers were ancient posters and announcements from the twenties and thirties, with art deco lettering and images of Gibson Girls. In an earlier era, it must have been an antechamber of sorts. The room smelled of paradichlorobenzene and something bad—like old beef jerky, Nora decided.

At the far end, a great dim hall opened up. In the reflected light, she could see that its walls were covered with frescoes of the pyramids of Giza and the Sphinx as they had appeared when first built.

“Now we’re approaching the old Egyptian galleries,” McCorkle said.

They entered the vast hall. It had been turned into storage space: shelving was covered in transparent plastic sheets, which were in turn overlaid with dust.

McCorkle unrolled the blueprints, squinted at them in the dim light. “If my estimations are correct, the entrance to the tomb was in what is now the annex, at the far end.”

Wicherly went to one shelf, lifted the plastic. Beneath, Nora could make out metal shelves crowded with pottery vessels, gilded chairs and beds, headrests, canopic jars, and smaller figurines in alabaster, faience, and ceramic.

“Good Lord, this is one of the finest collections of ushabtis I’ve ever seen.” Wicherly turned excitedly to Nora. “Why, there’s enough material here alone to fill up the tomb twice over.” He picked up an ushabti and turned it over with reverence. “Old Kingdom, II Dynasty, reign of the pharaoh Hetepsekhemwy.”

“Dr. Wicherly, the rules about handling objects…” said McCorkle, a warning note in his voice.

“It’s quite all right,” said Menzies. “Dr. Wicherly is an Egyptologist. I’ll take responsibility.”

“Of course,” said McCorkle, a little put out. Nora had the feeling that McCorkle took a kind of proprietary interest in these old collections. They were his, in a way, as he was one of the few people ever to see them.

Wicherly went from one shelf to the next, his mouth practically watering. “Why, they even have a Neolithic collection from the Upper Nile! Good Lord, take a look at this ceremonial
thatof!
” He held up a foot-long stone knife, flaked from gray flint.

McCorkle cast an annoyed glance at Wicherly. The archaeologist laid the knife back in its place with the utmost care, then reshrouded it in plastic.

They came to another iron-bound door, which McCorkle had some difficulty opening, trying several keys before finding the correct one. The door groaned open at last, the hinges shedding clouds of rust.

Beyond lay a small room filled with sarcophagi made of painted wood and cartonnage. Some were without lids, and inside, Nora could make out the individual mummies—some wrapped, some unwrapped.

“The mummy room,” said McCorkle.

Wicherly rushed in ahead of the rest. “Good heavens, there must be a hundred in here!” He swept a plastic sheet aside, exposing a large wooden sarcophagus. “Look at this!”

Nora went over and peered at the mummy. The linen bandages had been ripped from its face and chest, the mouth was open, the black lips shriveled and drawn back as if crying out in protest at the violation. In its chest stood a gaping hole, the sternum and ribs torn out.

Wicherly turned toward Nora, eyes bright. “Do you see?” he said in an almost reverential whisper. “This mummy was robbed. They tore off the linen to get at precious amulets hidden in the wrappings. And there—where that hole is—was where a jade and gold scarab beetle had been placed on the chest. The symbol of rebirth. Gold was considered the flesh of the gods, because it never tarnished. They ripped it open to take it.”

“This can be the mummy we put in the tomb,” Menzies said. “The idea—Nora’s idea—was that we show the tomb as it appeared while being robbed.”

“How perfect,” said Wicherly, turning a brilliant smile to Nora.

“I
believe
,” McCorkle interrupted, “that the tomb entrance was against that wall.” Dropping his bag on the floor, he pulled the plastic sheeting away from the shelves covering the far wall, exposing pots, bowls, and baskets, all filled with black shriveled objects.

“What’s that inside?” Nora asked.

Wicherly went over to examine the objects. After a silence, he straightened up. “Preserved food. For the afterlife. Bread, antelope joints, fruits and vegetables, dates—preserved for the pharaoh’s journey to the afterworld.”

They heard a growing rumble coming through the walls, followed by a muffled squeal of metal, then silence.

“The Central Park West subway,” McCorkle explained. “The 81st Street station is very close.”

“We’ll have to find some way to dampen that sound,” Menzies said. “It destroys the mood.”

McCorkle grunted. Then he removed an electronic device from the bag and aimed it at the newly exposed wall, turned, aimed again. Then he pulled out a piece of chalk, made a mark on the wall. Taking a second device from his shirt pocket, he laid it against the wall and slid it across slowly, taking readings as he went.

Then he stepped back. “Bingo. Help me move these shelves.”

They began shifting the objects to shelves on the other walls. When the wall was at last bare, McCorkle pulled the shelf supports from the crumbling plaster with a set of pliers and put them to one side.

“Ready for the moment of truth?” McCorkle asked, a gleam in his eye, good humor returning.

“Absolutely,” said Wicherly.

McCorkle removed a long spike and hammer from his bag, positioned the spike on the wall, gave it a sharp blow, then another. The sounds echoed in the confined space and plaster began falling in sheets, exposing courses of brick. He continued to drive the spike in, dust rising… and then suddenly the spike slid in to the hilt. McCorkle rotated it, giving it a few side blows with the hammer, loosening the brick. A few more deft blows knocked free a large chunk of brickwork, leaving a black rectangle. He stepped back.

As he did so, Wicherly darted forward. “Forgive me if I claim explorer’s privilege.” He turned back with his most charming smile. “Any objections?”