The Third Gate (35 page)

“You can leave this place now,” Logan said. “You’re free. You’ve won.”

For a moment, she swayed, as if from great weariness. A new expression came over her face—one of uncertainty and doubt. She blinked, staring at Logan.

“Jen,” Rush said, “he’s right. Let’s go. Step away from the pit.” And he walked to her, arms once again outstretched.

Suddenly, Jennifer swiveled back toward her husband. As she looked at him, her eyes glazed over once again—and a strange smile formed on her lips.

“The pit!” she cried in a great, ringing voice. “The black god of the deepest pit will seize him!
And his limbs will be scattered to the uttermost corners of the earth!
” And then—with a sound that could either have been a bark of victory or a sob of despair, or perhaps a combination of both—she hurled the canister of nitroglycerin toward the concrete floor between her feet and those of her husband.

Instantly, Logan turned away but was knocked to his knees by the force of the explosion. He felt a spray of wet matter stripe its way up the small of his back.

“No,” he murmured.

Staggering to his feet, not looking back, he made his way as quickly as he could across the pontoon bridge and through the ruined corridors of Green, the smoke now so thick he could barely see.

The marina was, miraculously, as empty now as it had been jammed with people just ten minutes before. All the vessels were gone. A riot of papyri, scarabs, statuettes, evidence bags, gold figurines, coins, gems, printouts, broken crates, and countless other jetsam—much of it invaluable—lay scattered around the flooring, catwalks, and jetties.

Above the ever-increasing roar of the flames, he heard the honk of a nautical horn. A small tender had just left the dock, the last to depart the Station. Beyond it, Logan could make out a long line of other craft, some large, like the two airboats, others tiny, all stretched out across the Sudd, heading away as quickly as the foul swamp would permit.

The tender honked again, turned around, and approached the farthest jetty of the marina. On impulse, Logan reached down, scooped up a handful from the treasure strewn at his feet, pushed it into the pocket of the lab coat. Then he raced along the catwalk, tore down the jetty, and leaped from its end into the rear of the tender. The little craft banked around and resumed its course, following the caravan of retreating vessels.

“Thanks,” Logan said, gasping for breath.

“Better keep your head down,” the pilot said in return.

Logan ducked into what served as the vessel’s hold: a small space barely large enough for a few life jackets and a spare can of gasoline. And then—with a violence he thought would have been reserved for Armageddon, and Armageddon alone—the Station tore itself apart behind them with a roar that seemed to rend the universe and that turned the sky, and the surrounding earth, as black as night.

57

The motley procession of vessels steamed north in the fading light of afternoon. They had at last left the swampy hell of the Sudd behind and were headed for the upper cataracts of the Nile.

Whether the craft were going to attempt to pass the cataracts and head into Egypt proper, or whether they would land at some intermediate point and relocate the expedition to trucks or aircraft, Logan didn’t know—and he didn’t much care. After transferring from the tender to one of the large airboats, he had spent the journey staring moodily out of a porthole, watching the passing landscape but seeing nothing, wrapped in a coarse ship’s blanket. The overall mood of the ship seemed to match his own: shock, grief, uncertainty. People huddled in small groups, talking in low tones or comforting one another.

As the sun began to set, Logan stirred. He stood up, put the blanket
aside, and walked out onto the deck. Not once during the journey had he looked back at the destruction and burning ruin they’d left behind; he did not look back now. Instead, he walked forward in search of coffee. He found some in a cramped galley near the bow. Within were Valentino and a few of his men, standing in a half circle around an espresso machine. Valentino nodded to him and wordlessly passed him a demitasse.

Cradling the cup, Logan walked sternward, then climbed the stairs to the vessel’s upper deck. Here he found Tina Romero, sitting on a deck chair, wrapped in her own blanket. She had managed to clean herself up, but in spots her hair was still sprinkled with flecks of dried mud.

He sat down beside her, passed her the espresso. She smiled wanly, took a sip.

As he settled into position in the deck chair, he felt something prick his side. He reached down, felt in the pocket of the lab coat, and drew out a small handful of items. In his palm, carnelians and rubies glowed richly in the light of the setting sun. He had completely forgotten snatching them up in his desperate run for safety. Now, looking down at them, he couldn’t imagine why he had done so. Was it some desire—some need—to salvage something from the ruin of the ill-fated expedition? Or something deeper, more atavistic—something to do with the loss of Ethan and Jennifer Rush?

Tina looked over. Her eyes, which had been dull and faraway, brightened somewhat. She reached down, her fingers rifling gently through the artifacts, and picked up a small faience amulet. She held it up to the fading light. It was an eye—seen, as in all ancient Egyptian art, in full face rather than in profile—surrounded above and below by decorative sculpted curls.

“A wadjet,” she said over the cry of the waterbirds.

“Wadjet?”

“The story goes that one day, while Horus was asleep, Seth—his great enemy at the time—crept up and stole one of his eyes. When Horus awoke, he went to Isis, his mother, and asked her for another. This was the replacement she made: the wadjet, or healed, eye. It supposedly
holds great magical power.” She stared at it. “This must have come from Niethotep’s mummy.”

“How do you know that?”

“Priests wrapped wadjet eyes into the bandages of mummies as a form of magical protection.” She turned it on its side, pointing at something.

Logan peered closer. There, engraved, were two images: a catfish and a chisel.

“Narmer,” he murmured.

“She appropriated even this,” Tina said. She sighed, shook her head, and passed it back.

“Keep it,” Logan said.

For a long time, they just sat there, in the slow, healing silence, as the vessel moved north.

“What do you think Stone’s going to do?” Logan asked at last. He hadn’t seen the expedition’s leader since the voyage north began.

Tina glanced at him. “About all this? He’ll come out smelling like a rose. He always does. He’ll have an interesting story to tell—assuming anyone believes it. But from what I can tell, it appears we managed to salvage a large number of the more important grave goods.”

“Salvage? I thought that word was anathema to you.”

She smiled mirthlessly. “Normally, it is. But here, we had no choice. The discovery was simply too important to leave to the flames—especially the large number of papyri we recovered. They hold priceless information—even if they do raise more questions than they answer.”

“You mean, why Narmer was so far ahead of his time.”

“Yes. Why did so many ceremonies, so much art, so many beliefs that we thought didn’t develop until many centuries after his time actually originate with him? And what happened to them? Why were they lost for so long?”

“I can guess the answer to that last question,” Logan said. And he pointed at the wadjet eye that was still clasped in her hand.

Tina nodded slowly, closing her fingers over the artifact. “At least I won’t have to worry about my job. I’ve got years of research ahead of me.”

Another, longer silence settled over them. The sun crept lower, then sank, behind the horizon.

“Why did she do it?” Tina asked at last, in a very low voice.

He turned toward her in the gathering dark.

“What happened to Jennifer Rush?” she asked.

For a moment, Logan said nothing. And then he began to answer—an answer that, he realized, he had been unconsciously rehearsing the entire time they’d been traveling downriver. The comfortable, the orthodox, answer. “Jennifer had certain—psychological issues,” he said. “Rush told no one about them. He felt that her unique gifts, the length of her own near-death experience, made her valuable enough to the expedition that it outweighed those issues.”

“Valuable to his precious Center, you mean,” Tina said bitterly. “Think of the publicity value it would have meant for him.”

“No,” Logan replied. “I don’t think he ever thought about it in those terms. He cared for her—cared for her deeply. But I think his attachment to his research blinded him somewhat. He didn’t see, or refused to see, the toll that the crossings were taking on Jennifer.”

“In that case, he was blind. I could see it. I
did
see it, that time I witnessed her going over. If Ethan knew she was emotionally unbalanced, he shouldn’t have forced her to undergo that. Not once, and certainly not again and again. Especially after her own personal trauma—clinically dead for fourteen minutes. It’s no wonder she ultimately came to believe herself possessed by a spirit from the dead.”

When Logan didn’t answer, Tina fetched a deep sigh. “That time we watched Ethan induce the hypnotic state, ask her all those questions … I couldn’t help but wonder: What did it feel like for her? I mean, when she came back out of it? Poor Jennifer.”

Still, Logan said nothing. He was remembering an earlier conversation he’d had—a very different conversation—with Ethan Rush.
I’ve been thinking about what you said
, the doctor had told
him.
That Jen was brain-dead for so long—that her NDE was so protracted—that, in essence, she might have lost her soul
.

Fourteen minutes …

“Came back?” he said at last. “We don’t know what came back.” But his voice was so soft that Tina did not hear it over the thrum of the engine and the lapping of the waves.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

While research for
The Third Gate
drew on many factual sources, Egyptologists will note that I have not hesitated to alter numerous relative dates, rites, beliefs, and many other facets of ancient Egyptian history—both general and specific—in the service of this novel. And while the Sudd is most certainly a real place, I have also altered various geographic, political, and temporal aspects of the swamp, returning it to the kind of unearthly place described so vividly in Alan Moorehead’s
The White Nile
.

Be that as it may,
The Third Gate
is a work of fiction, and all characters, events, and particulars in the novel are entirely imaginary.

Many people helped see this book to its conclusion. In particular, I want to thank the endlessly patient and enthusiastic Jason Kaufman, as well as Rob Bloom, Douglas Preston, Greg Tear, and Eric Simonoff.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Lincoln Child is the
New York Times
bestselling author of
Terminal Freeze
,
Deep Storm
,
Death Match
, and
Utopia
, as well as coauthor, with Douglas Preston, of numerous
New York Times
bestsellers, most recently
Cold Vengeance
and
Gideon’s Corpse
. He lives with his wife and daughter in Morristown, New Jersey.

ALSO BY LINCOLN CHILD

TERMINAL FREEZE
DEEP STORM
DEATH MATCH
UTOPIA

WITH DOUGLAS PRESTON

The Pendergast Novels

COLD VENGEANCE
FEVER DREAM
CEMETERY DANCE
THE WHEEL OF DARKNESS
THE BOOK OF THE DEAD
DANCE OF DEATH
BRIMSTONE
STILL LIFE WITH CROWS
THE CABINET OF CURIOSITIES
RELIQUARY
RELIC

Gideon Crew Novels

GIDEON’S CORPSE
GIDEON’S SWORD

THE ICE LIMIT
THUNDERHEAD
RIPTIDE
MOUNT DRAGON