Channeling Cleopatra (10 page)

One day, as she was returning to the beluga
for the noon break, Namid surprised her with company.

Namid was dressed a little more formally
than usual, in the togs he wore for conducting TV interviews,
looking as dashing in a bush shirt and pith helmet as a short,
stocky, barrel-chested man in his sixties could look. He was clean,
too, which made him contrast with her and with every other worker
on the site. Behind him came three men, an older one she mentally
dubbed The Boss and what looked like two young sycophants, The
Yes-Men, all in tropical white suits.

The older man wore a snappy yellow
shirt.

It went with his decidedly un-snappy
jaundiced skin and banana-colored schlera. This was a guy whose
internal organs weren't working so hot. And he wasn't used to it,
either, you could tell. He was no great beauty, but it was hard to
tell his age because his skin had been stretched and cut so often
she suspected his nipples might be hiding behind his ears. He had
been expensively toned, too, but the muscle had quickly reverted to
flabbiness. He hadn't felt well in some time, it was clear.

The Yes-Men were everything he had
apparently wanted to be, at least physically: young, handsome, fit,
but maybe not as bright as he was. Or at least they hid it well
enough to fool The Boss, who probably wouldn't tolerate employees
who could out-plot him. Their facial expressions were in perfect
harmony with his at all times.

"Dr. Hubbard, Mr. Rasmussen
and his staff are here to tour the Nucore investments and
facilities here in Egypt. Mr. Rasmussen"—and here Namid's tone was
rather agitated, indicating that though, perhaps, he had intended
to keep this important guest to himself, the man had proved more
difficult than anticipated and was now being foisted off on
her—"has his doubts about the value of our project to Nucore.
Perhaps you can explain it to him from a corporate perspective a
poor academic such as myself is at a loss to understand. Once he
sees the
vital work
you have been doing here, I hope he will reconsider his
opinion. I have contacted Dr. Faruk, with whom you are acquainted,
I believe, and she will be here soon to help guide him to the other
local sites."

"Why, certainly, Dr. Namid," Leda said, her
weariness vanishing with pleasure at the bombastic archaeologist's
high color and carefully controlled words.

About that time, Duke moseyed up, looking
unflappably pleasant. Leda was relieved. Mr. Rasmussen had no idea
how unpleasant Duke could be while looking so amiable.

"Won't you come in, gentlemen?" she asked in
the professional guide voice she had cultivated while touring big
shots through nuclear subs for the Navy. This was back before she
spent her duty hours trying to match dog tags with bits of people
in body bags.

Duke entered behind them and closed the
door, then stood at parade rest, looking very official and not at
all paternal as she bustled around, finding things for them all to
sit on.

"Did Dr. Namid have a chance to show you the
site yet, sir?" she asked Rasmussen.

"He tried. Nothing down there but a lot of
smelly dirt and rock." He craned his neck and looked all over the
interior of the beluga, evidently dissatisfied. "Where do you keep
the mummies?"

"What mummies, sir?" she asked. She wanted
to tell them she only had a daddy here, no mummies, but didn't
figure Rasmussen had much of a sense of humor.

"All of the specimens for future blends, of
course!" he said. "Don't be coy with me, young woman. I know what
you are doing here." He peered at her closely. "Do you?"

"Yes, sir."

"And that is?"

"Classified, sir." She used her best "name
rank and serial number is all you get" stony expression and
tone.

"Don't be ridiculous, young woman. I'm a
majority stockholder in the corporation. We have wasted a
ridiculous amount of money on this outrageous program, holding back
the Mediterranean while Namid and his people dig through debris
discarded twenty years ago by divers. If there are no mummies, what
are we doing here?"

Leda just raised an eyebrow at him.

Duke cleared his throat and asked, "Could I
see some ID, gentlemen?"

"What?"

Duke shrugged. "If you'll show me some ID,
I'll get on our security computer and find out what you're doing
here, if you don't know. Wouldn't want you to think I wasn't doing
my job either."

Rasmussen started to sputter, then decided
to laugh. "Well, at least there is one competent professional here.
Mr. Avaro, if you would show the officer our credentials?"

One of the smooth young men slithered to
Duke's side, where the old man was already seated and had logged
into the Nucore security system.

Meanwhile, the laughter dropped out of
Rasmussen's voice like a large segment of the Pharos Lighthouse
plopping into the bay as he said, "I have had your appointment to
this position investigated, Dr. Hubbard. I see that you are an old
school chum of Doctors Chimera and Wolfe. This looks like another
waste of company funds to me."

"You'd have to take that up with them, sir,"
she said. "My understanding was that I was hired because, in
addition to being qualified, I have the trust of my old friends.
You can understand why I'm not rushing to prove them wrong the
first time someone asks me about my work."

"I am not just
someone,
madame. I have
invested a great deal of my fortune in this project, because of
Nucore's involvement, and I have every right to know that the funds
are being wisely utilized."

The computer was printing out something now,
and Duke was using his phone. After a moment, he refolded the phone
into the little rectangle that fit into his shirt pocket, picked up
the printout, and gave it to her.

"Couldn't do the retinal scan here, Kid, but
these people seem to be who they say they are, and they have Class
Six clearance. I checked with the boss, and he said you can show
them how you use the fingerprinting process to show that two
individuals are related." To Rasmussen, Duke added, "He also hopes
you gentlemen will remember to protect your investment by keeping
Leda's mission here covert, since the Arab holy rollers in charge
of the government would shut us down if they knew exactly what
we're up to."

He glowered meaningfully at them from under
bushy white brows.

Rasmussen looked almost intimidated. He had
probably checked out Duke's file as well as hers. Yes, that would
be why, because his tone with her dad was much more polite than it
had been with her. "That goes without saying. As I was just telling
Dr. Hubbard, I have a considerable investment in this project."

She scanned the printout Duke had handed her
and the two-buck coin dropped. So that was who Rasmussen was! He
was the big shot Chimera had told her about, the one who wanted his
own DNA blended into one of his staff members. No doubt the tycoon
was trying this little power play to get her to do the first part
of the procedure for him, under the guise of testing her. Well, the
verbal instructions Duke had passed along gave her an out.

"Okay, Dad, time to make a deposit," she
said and took a small cell scraping from inside his cheek while he
made "aaah" noises. This she injected into a gel medium in one of
the petri dishes she had prepared, just in case.

"Why him?" one of the flunkies asked. "Why
not Mr. Rasmussen?"

"Are any of you related to him, or have you
brought along a few cells from a close relative?" she asked, hoping
they had not. "Even if you had, actually, with two related people
here, me and—this is my father by the way, Duke Hubbard—" Duke
waved a genial wave at odds with the slitty-eyed regard in which he
held all of them. "We can get fresh specimens. I can show you the
results more quickly this way."

About that time, there was a knock on the
door, and Duke answered it, admitting Gabriella.

Leda placed her dish under the microscope
and turned to make introductions. "Mr. Rasmussen, this is Dr.
Faruk. You have so much in common. Dr. Faruk's aunt, Contessa
Virginie Dumont, is a major stockholder in Nucore, too."

Rasmussen said rudely, "I thought no
Egyptians were supposed to know about this."

"I am an exception," Gabriella said. "I am
certainly not a Muslim fundamentalist, and I'm only half Egyptian.
The other half is Greek and French. Besides, I am familiar with the
process, as Dr. Hubbard knows."

"You've had it?" Rasmussen asked with more
interest than he had shown in anything so far.

"No, but I have observed it. Are you
considering it yourself? Were you hoping perhaps we had found
Alexander himself already? I am sorry to disappoint you. His
resting place remains a mystery thus far. I will be happy to show
you some of the sites where they thought he might be but was not,
two of which are now covered by hideously modern municipal
buildings."

"Dr. Hubbard was just showing us how to
prepare a specimen for the transfer," Rasmussen said.

"Oh, I'm only authorized to show you the DNA
fingerprinting part so you'll know how I'll identify the remains of
any notables that we might find. Like Alexander's, for instance. If
his grave isn't known, his father's is, and we have an ancient
specimen from that. These days, we can work with material that at
one time wouldn't have been decipherable."

"No, I want you to actually prepare a
specimen for transfer. Any technician can do what you're doing
now."

Duke cleared his throat. "The authorization
doesn't cover that."

Rasmussen said, "Then we'll have it
extended."

"Okay," Leda said. "We have plenty of time,
though. This part of the process will take a couple of days, and by
that time, if I've received the authorization, I can show you the
rest when you return."

"We can't wait that long!" Rasmussen
said.

She shrugged and cooed,
"Oh, I'm
soo
sorry
then, gentlemen. Can't rush it, you know. These things must be done
delicately. Maybe you can check with me again on your way back from
Luxor."

Gabriella winked at her and cajoled
Rasmussen into joining her for a tour of the museum and other
sites.

Leda sighed. She had no doubt that by
pulling enough strings and threatening loudly enough, Rasmussen
would get the necessary authorization.

But if he did, she didn't hear about it.
Nevertheless, when the two days passed without his return, and the
specimen was ready for the next step, she went ahead and processed
it.

"What are you doing there, Kid?" Duke asked
when he joined her for the noon beer.

"Oh, hi, Daddy. I just prepared your DNA for
relative immortality," she said.

"I'm immortal enough, Kid. Give that here.
Otherwise no telling what trouble it will get me into." Removing
the cell phone from his shirt pocket, he stuck it into his belt,
and placed the specimen in the shirt pocket instead, next to his
heart.

She laughed and handed him the specimen.
Later, she would begin the preparation of her own specimen for show
and tell instead.

But the tremor occurred two days later, and
with it the discovery that drove every previous concern from Leda's
mind.

CHAPTER 8

Funny how easy it was to take even the most
alien environment for granted after you'd worked and sweated in it
for a few days, Leda thought.

She was walking back to work along the
eastern side of the harbor, where the huge stones from the ruins of
the palace complex and the Caesarium were found. Leda weaseled her
way into working on this part of the excavation because some
authorities believed that this was where the warehouse for
Cleopatra's books had been before it was burned.

As she began climbing down the ladder
leading from the dike on this side of the harbor to the scaffolding
crossing the seabed below, she saw the Mediterranean beyond the
cofferdam, in that moment looking calm, placid, benign.

And then, just as she set both feet on the
scaffolding, she caught a glimpse of the most western edge of the
sea dropping its postcard pose to quiver like a bowl of Jell-O.
Before that image had quite registered, her feet vibrated, and then
the boards under them gave a little buck and knocked her on her
derriere.

This phenomenon also captured the immediate
and rapt attention of the diggers, who were suddenly aware that
they were not digging under normal circumstances but were, after
all, standing in an area to which about five and a half square
miles of agitated sea held the mortgage. Foreclosure suddenly
became a very real possibility.

The dam was attached to land on each side of
the semicircular harbor of the island. On the western side it was
moored against the far western side of the island containing Fort
Quait Bay. On Leda's side it was connected on the seaward side of
the dike that was all that had remained of a little peninsula that
had held the palace complex and some other structures.

It was possible that Leda, having just
descended the ladder, could make it back up to the top of the dike
before the water ruptured the dam, but most of the other people in
the basin were too far from the ladders, shallow staircases, and
makeshift elevators worked by hand pulleys to make it. Besides,
there was bound to be some sloshing. Big sloshing. Anyone on the
dam would be knocked off. Probably the same thing would happen to
anyone on one of the narrow dykes or at Fort Quait Bay. The ladders
didn't matter. If the dam broke, they were all screwed and very
very wet.

For a few seconds, no one breathed.

The ground shook. The scaffolding rattled as
if attacked by hail. A few boards popped up. The dam groaned. The
quivering Jell-O did give a slosh, a slight slosh that spewed three
glistening spumes of spray over the dam, wetting the upturned faces
of the diggers. Then the shaking subsided. For about fifteen
minutes, nobody moved. Nothing happened.