Star of Egypt (18 page)

What would Haman do?

He looked up and found himself gazing directly into the dead, blank monster-eye of one of the television cameras. It was angled
on the lectern, erected very near the multiple coffins—as out of place in a tomb as you could get.

There would be no time or opportunity to gimmick the camera properly, so that left the lectern.

It was solid wood with carved molding. He tapped it out. Not hollow. Too uncomplicated to conceal anything. He tipped it up
and checked the base. Nothing. He set it down with a thump. Then, with his back to it, he turned slowly, scanning the layout
of the tomb in reverse from the podium.

The prime object in his line of sight was the coffin, whose foot was angled toward the podium, and thence toward the camera,
so that it would dominate the television picture. Slayton moved back to the coffin.

It was actually three boxes, one within the next. The ornate lids were designed to make themselves secure, and proved troublesome
for one man working alone. They did not prove impossible to manage, however, and Slayton got the primary box unlidded with
little real effort. Quickly he searched the interior, and the space allowed for the subsequent boxes. Nothing.

He made short work of the second lid, and of the third. Nothing came of these searches except a face-to-face with the remains—slightly
reconstituted, of course, so they did not disintegrate on contact with air—of Seth-Olet himself. The shriveled, diminutive
form grinned blankly up at Slayton, offering neither clues nor aid, suggesting soft death.

Slayton did fast measurements with his hands. He wanted to smash into the coffins with his fists, to yell out
I know it’s here, it has to be!
But he forced a chilling composure on himself. His estimates were fast and sure.

Between the second box and the one actually containing the mummy, he came up a palm-width short in depth. He sounded the apparently
solid surface beneath his hand. It did not resonate the way the other components of the multiple box sounded when he knocked,
and in that instant his heart jumped.

He snatched an ornamental gold dagger from one of the flanking tables, and used it to pry up the veneer, fully aware that
he was possibly desecrating Seth-Olet’s coffin. “You’ll forgive me, old boy,” he said to the mummy.

The strip that abruptly peeled up into Slayton’s hands had been nailed down with extremely thin, needlelike nails, the betraying
holes caulked in and carefully matched with the age and color of the surrounding layers. He wrenched it up and the strip broke
free along half the length of the second box.

Under it, nestled in black against a steel backing plate that had been installed in the head of the coffin, was a series of
metal pipes, capped with screw-lids at the far end and—Slayton knew—ground down at the near end, the foot end, the end pointed
directly at the lectern from behind. The pipes were packed with explosives; the concussive force of the detonation, seeking
the path of least resistance, would burst the sanded-down ends of the pipe-bombs, and whatever pay-load was stuffed into those
ends, along with the crude shrapnel produced by the exploding pipes themselves, would blow out through the foot of the coffins
with thousands of foot-pounds of explosive pressure.

The resultant blast would not only demolish the President at the appropriate moment, but kill whoever was to his left, destroy
a great portion of the tomb-room display, and provide some of the most sensational videotape footage in history, since the
camera would be destroyed too—but the last images it would relay to the video trucks outside the exhibit hall would be of
pieces of the President, flying directly into the lens. It was at once terrifying and inspired.

There was no telltale aroma of acid, however. Slayton searched and discovered a tiny plastic box wired to the charges, recognizing
it immediately. It was a relay junction, connected to a bank of acid batteries, which meant that the lethal weaponry he had
discovered was not on any sort of time-delay fuse, as he had feared. It would not go off until it was commanded to—in this
case, by flipping a switch on a control-broadcast box very similar to a television remote-control. Or perhaps it was wired
up to the cameras.

His heart thudded away freely now. The veins in his neck bulged, flooding pain into his battered head. With a swift and sharp
movement, he disconnected the relay box. Now the pipe-bombs could be lifted out with relative safety, and deactivated. Only
then did he dare to glance at his watch, and when he did, he felt a quiet wave of indescribable relief wash over him, his
forehead breaking out in nervous sweat.

It was 1:02 p.m.

Winship involuntarily shut his eyes when his railroad watch—a gold, extremely hardy paternal heirloom and one of his few concessions
to personal extravagance—tolled one o’clock straight up. By two minutes after the hour, his metabolism wanted to panic. Quarts
of acid released themselves into his stomach. Discreetly, he belched to himself, suffering with the sour taste. It did not
a bit of good.

It took eight more interminable, physically draining minutes before Ben Slayton—or, considering his condition, what was left
of Ben Slayton—walked out the exhibit hall door and made a beeline for him.

The Presidential motorcade resembled a circle of settlers’ wagons, and the Secret Service was everywhere.

“Take them in,” Slayton said to Winship. “It’s safe to go in. Let’s get this damned thing over with.”

Winship felt the irrelevant urge to ask Slayton if it was safe. His trust in his agent stopped him.

Another agent approached, and waited for Slayton’s attention to turn to him. His question seemed to be one thing, maybe the
only thing, Slayton had not thought about. He stopped, looking from the agent to the automobile, Department-issue, from which
he had come.

“No,” said Slayton at last. “Keep her here, with you, under guard, in that car, until I get back to you.”

The agent nodded and returned to the car.

“Do you have to go in there right away?” Slayton asked Winship. “I have a brief favor to request; it’ll take just a minute.”

Winship was taken aback. “What?”

“It concerns that rather bewildered-looking police officer standing over there.”

Officer Michaels watched the pair approach him. The derelict who had lit out from the speeding Camaro was dragging some government
bigwig over to complicate his day. Goddam well told, he thought. He was sick of letting these sons-of-rich-daddies off with
a slap on the hand. He wanted to find some hard legal point and make it stick. Michaels was tired of being pushed around.
Michaels was hopping mad.

Three minutes later, Michaels told his partner, Officer Craddock, to release the hippie they had collared from the Camaro.
He was gritting his teeth as he did it. He was thinking about requesting a transfer to one of the swill-hole districts, so
he could take out his aggressions on Puerto Ricans. He was thinking about murdering a bottle of 80-proof, and maybe not waiting
until he was off duty to do it.

“Lighten up,” said Craddock, once the two men were back in their cruiser. “That kid’s a hell of a driver, and nobody got hurt.”

The resultant barrage of shouting nearly pushed out the windows of the cruiser as it plowed down the alley, backward, wasting
its steel-belted radials all the way.

“Come on,” Slayton said to Buck Fuller. “If you’d like to meet the President, now’s your chance. You can bitch to him about
the situation for vets.”

Buck shot back an expression that told Slayton that was the
last
thing he wanted to do.

“Then follow me, and I’ll introduce you to the antiquities of jolly old Egypt. Tell me, Buck, does a thousand dollars an hour
sound like reasonable compensation for your time and the applications I’ve made of your singular driving skill?” He did not
wait for Buck’s reaction before he said, “Good. That fatherly gentleman over there—” He indicated Winship. “—will draw the
funds for you later, or I’ll know the reason why. Let’s go.” Slayton’s levity was forced. On the way back to the exhibit hall
he could not keep from glancing back toward the parked Impala sedan where Shauna Ramsey would be held until he checked in
with the agents inside.

Wilma rushed up as they made the door. “Not until after,” Slayton said, anticipating her questions. She looked flustered,
but said, “I wanted to find out if you’d stopped bleeding yet. I should have known; no blood in
you
. Just a lot of black ink—the kind in government ledgers—and vinegar.” Together they entered.

Winship was waiting for the group on the cleared front row of seats. On the opposite side of Camera One was Professor Willis
and Maggie Leiber. Willis looked preoccupied as Maggie talked and gestured, apparently prepping him right up to the last minute,
despite their witnessing Shauna’s removal from the exhibit hall.

Slayton knew he would have to make his excuses to them. They had trusted him. And so—President be damned—he crossed in front
of the camera to meet them. But speech-making turned out to be the least important of topics.

“Mr. Rademacher, I trust the area is secure?” Willis said, clinically. It was a sure bet he would not bring up Shauna.

Slayton nodded.

Willis continued. “That’s reassuring, I suppose, in light of what just happened. The Arab workers opted not to show for this,
and we found out why. We just got the phone call.”

“What?” Slayton said in a hoarse whisper.

“That fellow Bassam,” said Maggie. “And Ahmed Sadi. They just discovered them in the hospital, both dead. Apparently they…
they killed each other.” Maggie turned her head away. “Oh, damn, the cameras are going to catch something embarrassing, I
just know it!”

One of the cameramen turned directly to Willis and said, “They want to know if the visual setup for the podium is the way
you want it, sir.”

“Who wants to know?” said Willis, distracted.

“The director, sir,” he said, tapping his headset. “In the truck.”

“Oh. Oh yes, tell them it’s just fine.”

“No, it’s not,” said Maggie, biting her lip and considering the area display before them. “Let me think a minute.”

“Three minutes,” the cameraman said. In the rear of the room the Presidential entourage was causing a good deal of press commotion.
It was a session that Wilma did not feel obligated to participate in.

Slayton saw Maggie reappear, holding one of the glittering Canopic jars. “Missing. I knew something was off-balance,” she
said as she passed the camera and placed the jar at the foot of Seth-Olet’s coffin, along with the other three. Slayton had
noticed them during his search, but he had not counted them.

“Okay,” she said. Everyone was moving in the general direction of assigned seats.

“Maggie,” Slayton said. “What the hell was all that about?”

“Oh—I guess it got shuffled out of place while the Secret Service was giving this place the once-over this morning. It’s okay
now.”

Slayton seemed unfocused now. “Ahh—look. After this is all over, I suppose I’ll have to explain about—”

She stopped him by taking his face in both her hands, cradling it. “Ben, Ben—don’t apologize. You’ve really done a smashing
job. I mean it.”

Their eyes locked directly amid the hubbub of news cameramen filming the President’s approach toward the lectern, up a narrow
aisle between the files of seated guests. Slayton grasped Maggie’s hand and turned it against his face, kissing the palm lightly.
She let the hand linger. But his eyes did not leave hers. Across the room, Wilma saw the action and bristled. But there was
no time to watch that, as the assigned spectacle was about to begin.

Slayton was looking into her eyes still as he spoke, his jaw muscles working: “Goddam it….”

He jumped into motion as though electrified, heading straight for the President at the lectern. A grip was instructing the
Chief Executive on the particulars of the microphone. At the sight of Slayton sprinting for them, both men looked up as though
offended. On the periphery, the Secret Service agents moved in instantly, and then caught themselves. Win-ship’s eyes were
glued to Slayton’s moving form.

“Sir! Get down!” was all Slayton yelled as he passed the lectern, shoving the President to the far side and leaping straight
for the cluster of Canopic jars, grabbing the one Maggie had placed so carefully.

Straightening, he cast frantically around and saw no outs. Without any hesitation, and with the jar cradled in one arm, Slayton
delivered a forearm smash to the photographic back-drop, punching his way through the heavy gypsum board, then jumping through,
whirling like a basketball ace going for the perfect lay-up. His back against the wall, he used both arms to hook the Canopic
jar through the window over ten feet above his head. His grunt of exertion and the sound of shattering glass came together.

Slayton thought he heard the jar itself break somewhere outside. He never was sure.

The assembled audience came right up out of their seats when the dual explosions blew out the rest of the windows on the east
side of the exhibit hall building. Slayton fell to his knees as finely broken glass and fragments of window framing rained
down on him from above.

The blast seemed to punch all the air out of the cavernous room, making it impossible to hear anything but a vague roar. But
again, to Slayton, there was no time. He moved with as much agility as he could scare up, back through the door he had created
for himself in the “side” of Seth-Olet’s tomb.

Slayton was finished running. The Secret Service boys had collared Maggie Leiber, alias Rashid Haman, when she tried to dash
out the entrance. He stopped, his arms dropping to his sides, his work completed, as the woman glared at him from the door
across the chamber, her eyes twin embers of hatred, and her mien that of a cornered badger.

The entire sequence from Maggie’s entrance with the bomb had been captured for posterity on camera by the videotape crews.
Despite that, Slayton caught sight of Wilma with her camera, snapping everything and looking quite pleased.