Pendergast [07] The Book of the Dead(134)

“Don’t breathe those fumes,” said Pendergast, pausing in his pouring. “And keep stirring.”

“Thirty-five… thirty-six… thirty-four… thirty-one…”

“It’s stabilizing,” said Pendergast, relief audible in his voice. He resumed pouring in the nitric acid, a tiny bit at a time.

In the silence, Smithback thought he could hear something. He listened intently: it was the sound of distant screaming, muffled to a faint whisper. And then a thud sounded from the direction of the tomb, and then another, which rapidly became a dull pounding.

He straightened suddenly. “Jesus, they’re pounding on the tomb door!”

“Mr. Smithback! Continue reading the temperatures.”

“Right. Thirty… twenty-eight… twenty-six…”

The muffled pounding continued. Pendergast was pouring so slowly Smithback thought he would be driven mad.

“Twenty.” Smithback tried to concentrate. “Eighteen. Please, hurry.” He found his hand shaking, and as he removed the thermometer to read it, he fumbled and splashed some drops of the sulfuric-nitric acid mix on the back of his hand.

“Oh, shit!”

“Keep stirring, Mr. Smithback.”

It felt like his hand had been splattered with molten lead, and he could see smoke rising from the black spots where the acid had fallen on his skin.

Pendergast finished pouring. “I’ll take over. Put your hand in the ice.”

Smithback plunged his hand into the ice while Pendergast grabbed a small box of baking soda, ripped off the top. “Give me your hand.”

He extracted it from the ice. Pendergast shook baking powder over the burn marks with one hand while stirring with the other. “The acids are neutralized now. It’ll be a nasty scar—no more. Please resume stirring while I prepare for the next addition.”

“Right.” Smithback’s hand felt like it was on fire, but the thought of Nora trapped in the tomb reduced the pain to insignificance.

Pendergast removed another bottle from the ice, wiped it off, and measured some of the contents carefully into a small beaker.

The pounding, the screaming, seemed to be getting even more frantic.

“While I pour, you slowly rotate the flask in its ice bath like a cement mixer, keeping it tilted, and read off the temperature every fifteen seconds. Do not stir—don’t even knock the thermometer against the glass. Understand?”

“Yes.”

With excruciating slowness, Pendergast poured while Smithback kept rotating.

“The temperature, Mr. Smithback?”

“Ten… twenty… It’s shooting up… Thirty-five…” The sweat appearing now on Pendergast’s forehead frightened Smithback almost more than anything else. “Thirty-five still… Hurry, please, for God’s sake!”

“Keep rotating,” the agent said, his calm voice in sharp contrast to his damp brow.

“Twenty-five…” The distant pounding continued unabated. “Twenty… twelve… ten…”

Pendergast poured another small amount in, and once again, the temperature shot up. They waited for what seemed an eternity.

“Look, can’t you just mix it all up now?”

“If we blow ourselves up, there’s no hope for them, Mr. Smithback.”

Smithback forced down his impatience, reading off the temperature and rotating the flask, while Pendergast continued pouring bit by bit, pausing between pours. At last he tipped up the beaker.

“First stage complete. Now grab that separatory funnel and pour in some distilled water from that jug, there.”

Smithback picked up the funnel, which looked like a drawn-out glass bulb, a long glass tube with a stopcock angling away from its bottom. Taking the glass plug from its top, he filled the funnel with water from a jug sitting in the ice.

“Shove it upright into the ice, if you please.”

Smithback pushed the funnel into the ice.

Pendergast picked up the flask and, with infinite care, poured the contents into the separatory funnel. As Smithback looked on apprehensively, the agent performed the last several steps. Now a white paste lay in the beaker. Pendergast held up the beaker, examined it briefly, then turned to Smithback. “Let’s go.”

“That’s it? We’re done?” Smithback could still hear the pounding: rising to a crescendo now, backed up by ever-more-hysterical screaming.

“Yes.”

“Well, let’s hurry up and blow the door!”

“No—that door’s too heavy. Even if we could, we’d kill people: they’re all assembled just on the other side, by the sound of it. I’ve got a better entry point.”