Pendergast [07] The Book of the Dead(132)

A third ripping gunshot cleared the station completely. D’Agosta ran back to find Hayward wrestling with the grille. He helped push it back and together they ducked through.

Ahead of them, the corridor stretched for a hundred yards before taking a sharp turn toward the museum’s subway entrance. Tilework along the walls showed images of mammal and dinosaur skeletons, and there were framed posters announcing upcoming museum exhibitions, including several for the Grand Tomb of Senef. Hayward pulled a small set of plans from her pocket and unrolled them on the cement floor. The plans were covered with scribbled notations—it looked to D’Agosta as if she had gone over them many times.

“That’s the tomb,” said Hayward, pointing at the map. “And there’s the subway tunnel. And look—right over here, there’s only about two feet of concrete between the corner of the tomb and this tunnel.”

D’Agosta squatted, examined the plat. “I don’t see any exact measurements on the subway side.”

“There aren’t any. They only surveyed the tomb, estimating the rest.”

D’Agosta frowned. “The scale is ten feet to the inch. That doesn’t give us much precision.”

“No.”

She consulted the map a moment longer, then, gathering it up, she paced off about a hundred feet down the corridor before stopping again. “My best guess is that this is the thin spot, right here.”

The rumble of a subway car began to fill the air, followed by a roar as it passed the station without stopping, the noise quickly fading.

“You’ve been in the tomb?” said D’Agosta.

“Vinnie, I’ve practically been living in the tomb.”

“And you can hear the subway in there?”

“All the time. They couldn’t get rid of it.”

D’Agosta pressed his ear to the tiled wall. “If they can hear out, we should be able to hear in.”

“They’d have to be making a lot of noise in there.”

He straightened up, looked at Hayward. “They are.”

Then he pressed his ear to the wall again.





63





From his hiding place in the dim doorway, Smithback watched the murmuring, complaining crowds being ushered out of the hall toward the elevators. He lingered a few minutes after the last had passed by, then crept forward, ducked under the velvet rope, and inched along the wall to the corner, where he could peer into the Egyptian Hall. It wasn’t difficult to stay hidden: the only light came from the hundreds of candles still flickering in the hall, leaving much of the antechamber in darkness.

Pressed into the shadows beside the entrance, he watched a small knot of people emerge from the side door leading to the control room. He recognized Manetti, in his usual ugly brown suit, sporting an impressive comb-over. The rest were museum guards except for one man who, in particular, attracted his attention. He was tall and brown-haired, wearing a white turtleneck and slacks. Although his face was turned away, a large bandage was clearly visible on one cheek. What attracted Smithback’s attention wasn’t so much the man’s appearance as the way he moved: so smoothly and gracefully it seemed almost feline. It reminded him of someone…

He watched as the man strode to a huge silver cauldron of crushed ice. Dozens of champagne bottles had been pressed into the ice, their snouts pointing upward.

“Help me get rid of these bottles,” Smithback heard the man say to Manetti—and the instant he spoke, Smithback recognized that honeyed voice.

Special Agent Pendergast. Out of prison? What’s he doing here? He felt a sudden thrill of excitement and surprise: here was the man whose name he’d been working to clear, walking around as casually as if he owned the place. But along with the excitement came a sudden sinking feeling—in his experience, Pendergast appeared only when the shit was really hitting the fan.

Two of the guards jogged up to the tomb entrance, and Smithback watched as they made an attempt to lever open the doors with a wrecking bar and a sledgehammer, without success.

Smithback felt the sinking feeling increase. People were trapped inside the tomb—he knew that—but why this sudden desperate effort to get them out? Was something going wrong inside?

His blood ran cold with speculation. Fact was, the tomb presented a perfect opportunity to launch a terrorist attack. An incredible concentration of money, power, and influence was inside: dozens of political bigwigs, along with an elite slice of the country’s corporate, legal, and scientific leadership—not to mention everybody of importance at the museum itself.

He returned his attention to Pendergast, who was pulling the bottles of champagne out of the ice and hurling them into a trash can. In another moment, he’d emptied the cauldron, leaving only a heap of crushed and melting ice. Now he stepped to an adjoining food table and, with a great sweep of his hand, cleared it of its contents, sending platters of oysters, mounds of caviar, cheeses, prosciutto, and breads crashing to the floor. Aghast, Smithback watched a massive Brie roll like a white wheel all the way across the hall before coming to a gluey rest in a dark corner.