“Ah ha! I’ve got it!” Kilgore cried as they finished their supper. She had spent more time reading than she’d spent eating. They had been working on the male mummy continuously; Kilgore affectionately called him “King Smut”—a reference to his status as an imposter to real Egyptian ancestry.
She slapped a hand on the reports that Bill Minor had given her after they had stripped off their contamination gear and headed off to supper.
The meal that Kilgore had mostly ignored consisted of T-bone steaks, perfectly cooked, some kind of cheesy and tasty pasta with shrimp and mushrooms, steamed broccoli, and tiramisu for dessert. Kilgore had devoured the lab reports but had barely tasted a bite of her meal.
Meanwhile, the guards, at their accustomed place on either end of the table, watched them through bored eyes.
“How do they get such quick turnover from the labs?” she muttered through a mouthful as she scanned the pages. “Takes me days, and I’ve got clout.”
Reid asked, “You’ve discovered what?”
She smiled triumphantly, an index finger tapping the report. “Look at the mitochondrial DNA results. The guy has a Haplotype C, with a HincII morph-6 mutation.”
“I love it when you talk like a Martian. And that means?”
“His mtDNA is Native American.” She might have swallowed a lamp given the way she glowed. “You don’t find Haplotype C in Egypt—especially with a HincII morph-6 mutation.” Bending to the reports, she thumbed quickly through the papers.
“Okay, here’s the delta 15 carbon analysis . . .” She stopped, frowning. “The guy has a definite signature for C4 plants, specifically significant amounts of dietary corn. Delta 15 nitrogen . . . Shit! He’s high in red meat and seafood!”
She flipped to the enamel analysis taken from inside one of his molars. “I don’t get it.” She looked up, a deep frown incising her forehead. “This is the kind of stable strontium and oxygen isotope signature we’d expect from someone growing up on the North Atlantic coast.” She flipped to the next report, her frown deepening. “From the mineral signature fixed in his molar dentine as it was developing, he grew up in . . . Germany?”
“Kilgore, remember the guy’s skull shape? The angle of the femoral neck? Everything points to a Northern European ancestry.” He loaded his fork with pasta, watching her dark eyes focus on infinity. “I’ve dug enough burials to know for a fact he’s a white guy. Given that long skull, narrow receding cheekbones, the brow ridge and straight nasal bones he can’t be anything else.”
“But, Reid, he’s descended from a line of females originating in the western hemisphere. Haplotype C, with that HincII morph-6 mutation, is only found in the Americas; its highest frequency is in Central America and northern South America.”
“Where Mayan mathematics were invented,” he reminded. “Let’s not forget that tomb and what was written all over the walls.”
“So how could a northern European get a Mesoamerican female ancestor, get to Central America where he ate corn, and back to Egypt to be buried in a tomb in 1350 BC? He’s modern.”
Lost in thought she began eating again. “Bill promised us that the Carbon-14 and AMS dates would be back by the end of the week. That will be the final nail in the sarcophagus, so to speak. Then we can put King Smut safely where he belongs: In the fraud category.”
“So, if he was raised in northern Germany, had orthopedic surgery, and one modern filling in his molar, why does his perimortem dental hygiene look like something indicative of early agriculture? And northern Europe isn’t going to give you a delta 15 carbon analysis for corn, beans, and squash. The report data indicate he was eating plants using the four-carbon, or C4 cellular metabolism. C4 plants all grow in hot environments. His signatures should be from C3 plants, the kind that grow in cool and wet environments. Like northern Europe.”
She shrugged. “Okay, so he grew up in post-war Germany, then moved to Egypt where he couldn’t afford dental care. That’s why the teeth—which developed when he was a youth—have that signature, and the bones, which fixed the C4 elements from later in life . . .” She frowned, thumbing back through the reports. Stopping, she read through the columns and figures.
“What?” he asked.
“I don’t get it.”
“Get what?”
“His tests show higher than normal levels for radiation, but no PCBs, DDT, or other modern pollutants. His lead levels are oddly low, too. Modern Egyptians grew up with lead pipes, leaded gasoline, paint, and no EPA to tell them no.”
“Which means?”
She gave him a shrug. “It means wherever he lived eating C4 plants and having rotten dental care, it wasn’t modern Egypt.”
Reid considered that. “What about the high levels of corn content in the diet?”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning maybe he was in Mexico or Central America? We do have the C haplotype. And dental care’s not that great.”
She flipped back through the reports, frowning again. “Corn products go into everything in the modern world from soda to cookies.”
“So, just who is King Smut?” Reid mused.
When they’d finished, the guards led them down the hallway and to their room. Reid followed Kilgore in as the door clicked shut with finality behind him.
“Wouldn’t it be nice if they’d at least let us have a TV?”
“Bored?” she asked, stepping into the bathroom to wash her hands.
“All we’ve done is work until we can’t stand up, then fall in bed and sleep like logs. How could I be bored?”
Kilgore stepped out and placed her hands on his chest; her brown eyes searched his. “I cannot imagine doing this without you, Reid. I’d have broken down into a screaming mess.”
He pulled her close to savor the feel of her firm body against his. “Yeah, well, if you’ve got to be a prisoner . . .”
She pushed back just far enough to find his lips, her soft kiss intensifying. As her tongue touched his, his pulse began to race. He tightened his grip on her, aware of her breasts against his chest, her hips pressing against his.
She was panting when she pulled back, her eyes glistening as she stared up into his. “Wow.”
“Oh, yeah.”
“Somehow, I just don’t think we’re going to be bored tonight,” she told him as her nimble fingers began unbuttoning his shirt.