Conspiracy To Murder
Auteur
Heather Graham
Lezers
17,9K
Hoofdstukken
12
Prologue
The MummyA Year Ago
“Sir!”
The word was spoken softly and with respect.
Dr. Henry Tomlinson, renowned Egyptologist, turned. One of the grad students had just slipped through the inner flap of the air-controlled prep tent and was smiling benignly, awaiting his attention.
He hadn’t actually taught in about five years, but he still loved it—and working with students. He’d retired to spend all his time in the field, and he’d recently been hired by Alchemy, an Anglo-American sponsoring company, to head this dig. Alchemy was into all kinds of tech and had become a Fortune 500 company. Every year, they sponsored an exceptional archeological event, followed by a public exhibit. Recent ones had been centered around the Amazon River, central China—and now ancient Egypt. Their resources were phenomenal and Henry still couldn’t believe his good fortune. But no matter what monetary resources had been offered, he was thrilled about having grad students involved.
This one was Harley Frasier. Just twenty-six, she was tall, shapely, honey blonde, with a face crafted in perfect classic symmetry and enormous green eyes that seemed to take in everything. She was serious and brilliant and could nail the crux of information with laser-like acuity. She also had a sense of humor and the most delightful laugh he had ever heard.
Of the five specialty graduate candidates, she was, beyond a doubt, his favorite. He often felt like a grandfatherly mentor to her—and the idea made him happy. He’d had no children of his own. He’d never even had a wife. No time for a family. He hadn’t intended it be that way forever, but there was always so much to do. If he’d had the chance to be a father, he would’ve been pleased and proud to have had Harley as a granddaughter. She seemed to feel the same closeness to him.
Perhaps their bond was odd since, of the five grad students, she was the one who was different, the only one not majoring in Egyptology—though she was minoring in it. She had no plan to go into Egyptology or even archeology or history for her life’s vocation.
Harley was with him, first of all, because of her knowledge regarding the field and her love for it. But she was also there because her work was going to be in criminal psychology and forensic science. Henry had been baffled when he was approached by her university. Professors at the Maryland college Harley was attending—which was arguably the top school for criminology and it also offered majors and minors in Egyptology and archeology—had explained to him the importance of having a student like Harley on this expedition. He had been on the hunt for the tomb of Amenmose for nearly a decade; for that entire decade, he’d been finding more and more clues about the location—and, of course, with the permission and blessing of the Egyptian government—finding other ancient tombs and treasures in the process. This allowed for his continued excavations. But the discovery of the tomb of Amenmose was the main focus of his work.
Many others had searched.
Some of them had died or disappeared in that effort.
History suggested that Amenmose had been murdered. As a criminology student, Harley was to be in on the discovery and would seek and find whatever evidence those who had managed his secret burial might have left behind.
Not that, to Henry’s mind, Amenmose hadn’t deserved murder. He had usurped power every step of the way. He’d abused officials below him. It had even been intimated that he had attempted to kill those in power above him.
“I think we’ve gotten all the manual labor done for the evening and we’re going to pack it in, maybe drive to that little town for some dinner. Want to come with us? You should. You’d enjoy it. Or shall we bring you back something?” Harley asked him.
“Next time, Harley, I’ll come with you all,” he promised. “There’s so much in here! I’m not going to go touching anything until we’ve had a chance to work with the preservation measures, but I do intend to look at everything.”
Earlier that week, they had finally discovered the secret site of the tomb of Amenmose. And, of course, since then, Henry Tomlinson had been on cloud nine. This was a dream come true, a fantasy realized, the culmination of a lifetime of love and dedication.
Harley laughed softly. “Yes! You did it, Dr. Tomlinson.”
“I did, didn’t I?”
The Amenmose find was among the most important ancient Egyptian discoveries of the past few years; he couldn’t have been more excited about being a major player in that discovery. And even now, at the end of an exhausting day—and even though he truly enjoyed the young people working with him—he was far too fascinated to leave. There were a dozen or so coffins to be studied, one of them presumably that of Amenmose; the group wouldn’t consider opening them until everyone was back at the museum in Cairo. But he could study the canopic jars they’d found thus far. There were also other artifacts that had been carefully moved into the prep tent. So much to observe and to describe! And there were the broken coffins, which had probably been as meticulously set as any of the others, but had been in the section where a partial cave-in had taken place. Several of those outer and inner coffins had split and exposed their mummies. Henry Tomlinson was fascinated to see what study was possible before the mummies were packed and crated and prepared for the trip to Cairo, where options for preservation were far more sophisticated, and where the mummies could be X-rayed and DNA could be tested.
Oh! It was all so monumental.
Amenmose had been a priest in the days when another priest, Ay, had ruled Egypt as regent. Ay had done so for a well-known pharaoh, the boy king, Tutankhamen. As regent, Ay had wielded immense power. He’d gone on to become pharaoh in his own right—after the death of Tut at the age of nineteen.
Amenmose, according to ancient texts, had tried to usurp some of that power. And he’d had his own followers in the court, making him a dangerous man. Because of this he had feared for his immortal life—and his wife had kept his burial plans a complete secret, shared only with members of his family. Naturally, legend had it that many of his most loyal followers—rather than give away any secrets—had been willing to die with him, sealed alive in a grave for eternity.
“Dr. Tomlinson, you worked so hard. And wow! You triumphed. You should celebrate. Come out with us. Is there nothing I can do to convince you?” Harley asked. She still had that wonderful smile, as if she were the one who was far older and wiser. “Nothing’s going to disappear. We’ll go have some dinner and drinks and come on back. There are plenty of men on guard here. And,” she added, “you really deserve a little celebration with us. Think of it—you researched and imagined and looked into the ancient Egyptian mind and you made the discovery. It’s your shining moment. You’re another Carter with his Tutankhamen, Dr. Tomlinson. Do you realize that?”
“Oh, no, no,” Henry demurred. He shook his head firmly. “A celebration is tempting, but I couldn’t leave. I couldn’t. I do promise that I’ll come with all of you on another day. Harley! Look at this! I feel like, as the song says, I have treasures untold.”
Harley laughed. “You saw The Little Mermaid?” she asked.
He stared at her, feeling a bit chagrined. “Oh! Yes, I get it, you wouldn’t think that I’d see a children’s movie…” He laughed, too. “Remember, I do have great nieces and nephews! Anyway…”
He started walking as he spoke. “Harley, these are such treasures! This broken coffin.” He gestured at it. “Damaged by time and by that cave-in, however many centuries ago. And this fellow, Harley. It almost looks as if he was buried alive. Wrapped up alive and screaming.”
“I don’t think you can embalm anyone and have that person come out of the process alive,” Harley reminded him, amused. “That’s only in fiction. We both know what was involved in Egyptian embalming, and just how many factors could’ve had an effect on the mummy’s appearance. Screaming mummies belong to B movies, right? And when you think about it, weird mummies are all the more reason you should come with us.”
“Why is that?”
Harley didn’t answer. The flap opened again and Jensen Morrow, another of the students, poked his head in to answer.
He’d obviously heard the question.
“Ooh! ’Cause you shouldn’t be alone with scary old stuff when you have cool kids like us to hang out with!” Jensen said.
They all laughed. Jensen was a good-looking, dark-haired young man who loved the study he was involved in, and Dr. Henry Tomlinson liked him very much, as well. Jensen played hard, but he worked harder. He came from money; his father was an inventor who’d come up with a special cleaning product. And yet Jensen never acted like money, never acted pretentious or entitled the way some rich kids did.
“Tempting, tempting, tempting,” Henry said again. “But I’m going to stay.”
Jensen raised his eyebrows at Harley. “Hey, girl, then it’s you and me heading out. The old man here isn’t coming. That’s okay. We’re bringing back the goods. Just the two of us, since Belinda Gray is waiting for a video chat with her fiancé—military, as we know!—in Iraq. Roger Eastman agreed to help one of the tech guys investigate some computer info they’re picking up. I hate to say it, but we’re getting chatter about an insurgent group starting up. And Joe Rosello said he wants to learn more about the excavation equipment. He’s working with that pretty Egyptian girl, our translator, and learning about hoists.”
“Hoists? Yeah, right!” Harley said. “Satima. She is pretty, and thank goodness we have her. I’m just grateful she filled in at the last minute when the older gentleman we’d hired wound up ill. If I know our friend Joe at all, I know he’s very happy!” she said to Henry. “We won’t go far, since we seem to be feeling a wee bit nervous! And we won’t be late. We’ll bring you something to eat and see if you want to be social when we get back, okay? If, and only if, you’re absolutely positive you don’t want to take a ride with this handsome, if ridiculous, guy and me?”
Henry laughed. “Oh, Harley, you’re a sweetheart, but give it up. You know I’m not coming.”
She grimaced, a delightful movement of her face. “Yes, I do,” she admitted. “But we—your devoted students—have to try. I’ll bring you a special treat for dinner.”
“Don’t worry about me, guys. I’ll be fine.”
“Sorry, we will worry about you. At least we can make sure you eat. I’m willing to bet you’re going to be up all night—and you won’t even notice that you haven’t slept,” Harley said.
He smiled and made a shooing motion with his hands. “Go! Get on out with you. Be young and have fun and don’t become an obsessive old curmudgeon like me. Jensen, get her out of here!”
“Yes, sir!” Jensen said.
Harley still hung back. “You’re neither obsessive nor old,” she insisted. “Okay, wait. Maybe you are obsessive. Anyway, we’ll be back by nine or so, and like I said, I’ll bring you something delicious.”
“Sounds lovely! See you soon.”
And at last, Harley and Jensen left.
Dr. Henry Tomlinson turned his attention back to Unknown Mummy #1 for several long moments. Many pharaohs and royalty and even esteemed but lesser men, like Amenmose, ended up with unknowns in their tombs—servants needed in the next life.
Almost the entire lid of the coffin had been torn open. That afternoon, two of the students had painstakingly cleared out the rubble around the mummy. But Henry felt as if he was indeed looking at remnants featured in a B horror flick; the thing really did appear to be a man who’d been wrapped up with his mouth open in horror, left to silently scream into eternity.
Mummies weren’t wrapped like this alive. Unless, of course…
He’d never been intended to be a mummy?
He’d been a murder victim.
Could this unidentified mummy be Amenmose himself? he wondered excitedly. They hadn’t identified the man’s tomb.
Great question, but it wasn’t scientific to jump to conclusions. X-rays would give them an image of the insides—and that would probably tell them if the facial contortions had happened because of some accident in the drying process or if he had somehow been wrapped alive!
No, it couldn’t be Amenmose, Henry decided. According to the ancient texts and all the information at his disposal, Amenmose had died before burial. Besides, they’d discovered one coffin in an inner tomb, deep in a hidden recess—again, just as the ancient texts had said. Amenmose’s enemies might have defiled his tomb if those who loved him hadn’t concealed his remains. The mummy here, found in the outer chamber, couldn’t be Amenmose—not unless there was a great deal they were missing! “Sorry, old boy. Lord only knows what happened to you,” Henry told the mummy.
“Hey!”
The inner flap to the preparation tent opened again. Henry looked over to see that it was Alchemy’s director at large, Ned Richter.
He was smiling. As he should have been. Their day had been fantastic.
“Hey,” Henry said. He liked Richter okay. Although not an Egyptologist himself, the man was studious and yet always ready help out with manual labor when needed.
Henry didn’t like Richter’s wife, Vivian, so much. She was an Egyptologist, too—at least in her own mind, he thought with a snort. Okay, so she did have her master’s degree from Brown; she was just annoying as hell and she didn’t think clearly or reason anything out. She was an attractive enough woman with short dark hair and dark eyes, and she claimed the maternal side of her father’s family had been Egyptian.
She liked to pretend that she knew what she was talking about.
She seldom did.
“Just checking on you!” Richter said.
Henry heard Vivian speaking behind her husband. “Tell him to come with us. We’ll get some food and drinks.”
“Hey, Viv!” Henry called out. “I’m good tonight. Going to work. And a couple of the students are picking me up something to eat. Listen,” he added in a more affable voice, “can’t wait till you and I have a chance to talk tomorrow. We can compare notes then!”
“Can’t you make him come?” Henry heard Vivian whisper.
“No,” Richter said flatly. “He’s head of the examination and prep all the way through the removal to Cairo—by Alchemy and the Egyptian government. As you know,” he muttered.
“See you in the morning!” Henry called pleasantly. Yes!
But he’d barely turned around before he heard the inner tent flap opening again.
This time, it was Arlo Hampton, the Egyptologist who’d been employed specifically by Alchemy to watch over their investment.
Arlo was young—tall, straight and a little skinny. He preferred his thick glasses to contact lenses. Good thing for Arlo that nerds were in; he was, beyond a doubt, a nerd. But a friendly and outgoing nerd. He loved Egyptology, and yet, unlike certain other people, he wasn’t full of himself or convinced that he knew everything.
“Hey, I knew you’d be alone with the treasures, snug as a bug in a rug!” Arlo told him cheerfully. There was something slightly guilty in his voice. “I wanted to make sure you were okay, though.”
“I’m great. And, of course, if you want to join me…”
“I’m beat, Henry. I’m what? Thirty years younger than you? I don’t know how you do it. I’m going to have a sandwich with the grad students when Harley and Jensen get back, and then hit my bunk until tomorrow. If that’s okay. I mean, I should be like you, hard at work… Oh, I did just meet Belinda’s boyfriend on Skype. Seems like a decent guy. So Belinda, Roger and Joe are taking care of their personal business, and then we’re all going to meet and after that—”
“I saw Harley and Jensen. They’ll bring me food. You’re fine, Arlo. Have a nice night.”
“Yeah, thanks. Strange, though. Something doesn’t feel right his evening. Am I just being paranoid?”
“Yes. And shoo. Go on, Arlo. You worked hard today. And I’m an obsessive old bastard. Get out of here!”
Arlo grinned. He lifted his hands. “I’m gone!”
And, at last, he was.
Henry was thrilled. He even began singing Ariel’s song from the Disney movie The Little Mermaid.
He walked back over to Unknown Mummy #1. “Strange,” he said, shaking his head with perplexity as he studied the mummy. “Just who was he? And what brought him here in this state?”
But then he shrugged. He’d found “natural” mummies at other sites—servants who’d stood guard after burial rites and died where they collapsed after the tombs were sealed and they slowly asphyxiated.
Henry walked back over to his desk to dictate notes into a recorder for the exhibit, which would one day be based on this project. “The earliest Egyptians buried their dead in small pits in the desert sand. The sand and the heat naturally ‘mummified’ the dead. Later, to prevent animals from digging up the bodies, they resorted to creating coffins. Coffins kept out animals, but they didn’t allow for the natural mummification that had been occurring when the bodies had gone straight into the sand. So the Egyptians began to learn the art of embalming. They quickly discovered that the ‘wet’ parts of the body needed to be removed. That included the heart and lungs, brain and liver and other organs. These were stored in canopic jars, where they were guarded, just as the body was guarded, so the dead were protected and ready as they entered into the afterlife. The process became forty days of drying with natron, a form of salt. Of course, a body was never simply dried. It was adorned with oils at various stages and also treated with religious rites.”
Henry stopped speaking; he thought he’d heard something moving in the preparation tent. That was odd. The local guards and the staff who worked for Alchemy were weary and bored with the findings. Egyptians had been unearthing mummies forever and ever, and even the security force of Americans and Brits was more bored by the ancient than intrigued. Most of them had worked around the world. They were, in a word, jaded—and far more interested in the pay scale than the work itself.
He looked around the tent. Nothing. Everything as it had been. Crates and boxes and mummies and treasures!
He shook his head, impatient with himself. He was incredibly lucky to have this time alone in the preparation tent. He’d been the one to do the research and the calculations; he’d been the one who’d garnered the sponsorship that had provided the money for this expedition. His papers had raised significant interest. It was—yes, indeed—his baby.
But eventually Dr. Arlo Hampton would want his time here, his chance to study these mummies, these treasures. So would Yolanda Akeem, their liaison with the Department of Antiquities. Then, of course, there was Ned Richter…and his wife. He’d bet that Richter couldn’t care less if he got any time with the mummies and ancient treasures or not. Richter was there to guard Alchemy’s interests and, Henry suspected, to ensure that they looked as if they were being incredibly magnanimous to the Egyptian government. After all, Alchemy financed these expeditions, he was almost certain, for tax breaks—and the media attention and promotion they provided.
Fine. The excavation was a great success. And this was his time. His time alone with all his treasures!
He started to go back to his work, but he could’ve sworn he’d seen movement from the corner of his eye.
He stood up and walked around.
Nothing.
Henry sat back down and continued his recording.
“Ancient Egypt—”
There was something behind him!
He tried to spin about.
And he saw nothing but binding, the linen binding that had been used on the ancient dead, saw it wrapped around fingers and a hand, saw the fingers and the hand circle his neck and—
Fingers, like wire, clutching his throat, so powerful, so strong…
He fought their hold. Wriggled and squirmed. He tried to rise; he couldn’t. The pain was terrible. The world began to blacken before him; little dots of light exploded in the darkness. And all he could think was that—
The mummy!
The mummy had risen to kill him!
It was impossible. Impossible. Impossible…
He was a scientist. Rational. He didn’t believe.
He was a scientist…
And as the last electrons exploded against the stygian pit of his dying mind, he couldn’t help but think…
He was a scientist.
Being killed by an ancient Egyptian mummy.
It didn’t make sense. It wasn’t right.
