Reid cradled a cup of steaming tea in his chilled hands and tried to come fully awake. Dawn was little more than an orange streak above the eastern canyon walls. The last of the stars were fading from a bruise-purple sky.
The Arab cook stirred couscous on a gas-fired stove. Despite the predawn shadows, Reid could see the sentries with their Kalashnikovs. Whoever they were, Skientia had hired the best. Reid hadn’t seen even a hint of amateur behavior.
He looked past camp toward the excavation. The tomb had to have been built in the last fifty years or so, but the slope fill had been compacted—actual stratigraphic layers visible in the walls of the excavation where eolian sands had settled before newer colluvial deposits had covered them in turn. Doing that took time, like thousands of years.
The damn thing just had the feel of antiquity.
If the tomb builders had collapsed the slope above to cover the tomb, it would have left a scar—something visible to his trained eye. The difference would have been in the coloration of the soil, the way the loosened matrix cascaded down in a fan shape. Something.
Yet all I see is the same undisturbed slope, just as pristine as the rest of the canyon.
The first sounds of an approaching helicopter carried on the still air. Moments later, Yusif, wearing cargo pants and a white T-shirt, stepped out of the sleep tent with his black beard twisted in disarray and his hair sticking up on the right side.
Radios were crackling as the guards spoke back and forth, discussing the approaching aircraft.
“That will be Dr. Kilgore France,” Yusif announced.
“That’s fast.”
Yusif grunted under his breath, stepping over to pour a cup of tea from the steaming pot on the camp stove. “My guess is that Skientia had her on a plane the moment we located the tomb entrance.”
“Rather presumptuous of them, don’t you think?”
Yusif glanced toward the approaching helicopter, then warily back at Reid. “Nothing makes sense, sahib.” He jerked his head toward the helicopter. “Why hire Kilgore France? Why you? Or me? We will all gleefully expose the perpetrators of this hoax, do everything in our power to disprove the tomb’s antiquity.”
The helicopter settled at the widest point in the narrow canyon. As the blowing dust subsided, the door popped open, and two figures climbed out. They were followed by duffel bags and aluminum equipment boxes. No sooner had the two people carried their gear beyond the rotors than the old Jet Ranger spooled up and rose, blasting the pair with dust and gravel.
Salim Rashid—in charge of the security detail—trotted out to meet them. Rashid gave them a respectful nod, spoke into his radio, and several of his men rushed forward to take their bags as the two—a man and woman—approached the camp.
Yusif quickly ducked into his tent, reemerging moments later wearing a clean white shirt, his hair slicked down.
“If you’re looking for a date,” Reid remarked dryly, “word in the profession is that Kilgore France takes herself pretty seriously. She’s a commentator for CNN, and for a while had her own television show. Her book on forensic anthropology actually made it onto the New York Times and USA Today bestseller lists.”
Yusif gave him a half-lidded look. “Good. I had hoped she would be a lady of taste and refinement. Given the alternatives she will find in camp, I will have no competition.”
Reid considered hitting him in the head with a rock. Then gave it up as he followed Yusif to meet Kilgore France and her companion. “Maybe the man with her is all the company she needs. Woman like her, she can afford to bring her own company. In America we call them stud muffins.”
From the side of his mouth, Yusif murmured, “Americans have a peculiar poverty of language. He’s military if I am not mistaken. He has that look about him.”
Reid studied the man: close-cropped dark hair, broad shoulders, with dangerous brown eyes. Almost catlike movement added to his upright posture and air of command. The khaki shirt looked overstuffed with muscles. Tan cargo pants—with full pockets and belted at the waist—were tucked into the tops of his high-laced boots. Nothing about the guy struck Reid as either warm or fuzzy.
Kilgore France, however, had been blessed by the best of her pale-blonde, blue-eyed, Swedish supermodel mother and her black NFL football-legend father. Reid guessed her to be in her thirties, about five-foot-seven, and perhaps one-hundred-thirty pounds. The practical field clothes she wore barely masked a body that . . . well, her mother was a supermodel.
Kilgore’s intelligent brown eyes fixed on his. A curious arch lifted her delicate right eyebrow, as if it were demanding some explanation of her current situation.
“Dr. France,” Yusif greeted, offering his hand. “It is my great pleasure to make your acquaintance.”
“Dr. al Amari,” she noted, shaking his hand firmly. “I read your CV on the plane. I’m sure you’ll have a great deal to teach me.”
“And you, me.” Yusif sounded almost obsequious.
She glanced again at Reid, who’d stood slightly behind, watching the exchange. The military man had braced his feet and crossed muscle-thick arms as he took in the camp, Yusif, and finally Reid. Something hard and anticipatory glinted behind his brown eyes.
“Dr. Farmer?” she asked, offering her hand.
“My pleasure,” he told her. “Somehow, I missed your CV on the plane ride over here. Mostly I slept and drank free champagne.” Nonchalantly, he added, “Never got to fly first class before.”
He caught a flicker of amusement in her quick eyes before her companion stepped forward, thrusting out his hand. “Bill Minor, Dr. Reid. I’m here with Skientia. You might call me one of their troubleshooters.”
“Is our trouble in need of shooting?” Yusif asked.
Reid interjected, “Only if it’s a modern tomb trying to pass itself off as ancient.”
“And you know that? Can prove it?” Minor cocked his head slightly, the hint of a smile in his thin lips.
Reid felt his hackles rising. “The Latin was problematic enough, but ancient Egyptians didn’t use Mayan glyphs, draw jet airplanes, or put electrical diagrams on walls.”
Minor didn’t even flinch. “That doesn’t concern me, Dr. Farmer. What concerns me is whether or not you can disprove the tomb’s antiquity through scientific means. Your reputation is for meticulous fieldwork. Outside of the cultural anachronisms, have you discovered anything which would categorically prove the tomb a hoax?”
“How about a steel door?”
“How is steel made, Dr. Farmer?”
“Iron alloyed with nickel, tin, chromium, molybdenum, or other metals.”
“Did you look closely at the door’s surface?”
“I did.”
“Rolled steel?”
“It looked as if it had been hammered.”
“I see.” Minor’s smile widened. “What if laboratory analysis proves it was hammered? What if the morphology and metallurgy reflect a primitive alloy of locally available metals?”
Yusif protested, “We have no record of steel production in Egypt until the arrival of the Romans, and even then it was the Arabs who perfected the technology after the seventh century.” He flung an arm in the direction of the tomb. “The architecture is Eighteenth Dynasty.”
“Exactly.” Minor crossed his arms. “Tell me, Dr. Farmer, with your extensive experience in excavation, did you see any evidence that would have indicated it was recently buried? And after gaining entry, while inside the tomb—excluding the art and script—did you see anything to suggest it was a modern construction? Perhaps plywood, plastics, machine screws, or other modern fabrication techniques?”
“No. But we’ve only begun our analysis.”
Minor chuckled under his breath. “One last question: Dr. Farmer, Yusif, what would it take to manufacture a hoax of this scale and authenticity?”
Reid laughed aloud. “You’d need a staff of technicians, specialists, and a team of brilliant archaeologists. It would cost millions, maybe tens of millions.”
Yusif added, “And you don’t hire that kind of talent off the street.”
Minor smirked in satisfaction. “No, you don’t. Egyptology is a small community. You all know each other, communicate at meetings, gossip about who is doing what. This is the sort of thing your closed professional community couldn’t keep under wraps.”
Reid frowned and glanced at Yusif. He, in turn, spread his hands wide in a most-Arab gesture of futility. “We would have heard, sahib.”
“And what’s my part in this?” Kilgore France asked, her expression having tightened and soured during the conversation. From the glance she gave Bill Minor, he definitely wasn’t her stud muffin.
Minor turned to her. “Doctor, if you would be so kind as to stow your things, I’d like you to accompany Yusif and Dr. Farmer into the tomb. My employers are particularly interested in the mummy we expect to find inside that sarcophagus. This may be the single most important burial you’ve ever examined.”