The Moses Virus (11 page)

“No. I want to know more before I involve them. As for Belagri, I’m not sure whether Doc was involved with them beyond a straight-forward consulting agreement—I don’t think he was, but I don’t know for sure.”

“Why would Belagri be so interested in the virus, anyway? It has nothing to do with their agribusiness.”

“That’s the mystery. Maybe it’s about creating superseeds resistant to such a powerful virus.”

“Or something worse,” Alex said, quietly.

“What do you mean?”

“Bioterrorism. Corporate warfare.”

“You think it could be used as a weapon?”

“Anything’s possible, I guess,” Alex said without inflection. “With powerful weapons, there always seems to be someone who wants to control them.”

The waiter showed up with their dinner.

Afterward, they walked through the quiet streets. Nearby, the Spanish Steps were crowded with hundreds of tourists, spilling out onto the piazza below. They passed the Spanish Steps. The moon shone brightly, giving the serpentine cobblestone streets a strangely beautiful look. As they walked and talked, they grew closer. Tom took her hand. She didn’t resist. Eventually, they returned to the Spanish Steps, climbed all of its 138 steps, threading their way through the hundreds of students, tourists, and musicians gathered to talk, sing, or watch. At the top, they turned toward Via Gregoriana, and soon found themselves in front of his building.

“Here we are. Interested in a nightcap? I’ve got some bottles of pinot grigio in the fridge.”

“I’d like that, thanks,” Alex said and smiled.

Tom opened the apartment building’s front door, made of steel and heavy glass, and they proceeded to the elevator.

“It’s a little rickety, but it’s reliable.” The door squeaked as he slid it open for her.

Stopping on the ninth floor, Tom and Alex walked down the corridor to his apartment. The door was slightly ajar.

“Strange,” Tom said. “I’m sure I locked it.” He pushed it open.

“Hello,” he said tentatively. He signaled to Alex to stay back.

Silence. Tom entered the apartment. “What the hell . . .”

The whole place had been trashed. Though the drawers of his desk were closed, Tom quickly determined that the contents had all been rearranged. Books in the shelves were in a different order than he had left them. Most importantly, his laptop was gone.

Alex joined Tom in the apartment.

“Oh, Tom. This is terrible.”

Tom walked into his bedroom, then returned. “Nothing is missing except my laptop.”

“I’m sorry. What about your book?”

“I backed it up on a flash drive, which I happen to have carried with me.” He pulled it from his pocket to confirm that he still had it. “Luckily, there was nothing on my computer except a few stray notes.”

“But why would only your laptop have been taken? What recent e-mails did you send? Or receive?” Alex asked.

Tom thought for a moment and replied, “I have a duplicate set on my iPhone. Let me see.”

Tom scrolled through his incoming and outgoing e-mails. Suddenly he frowned.

“What’s the matter?” Alex asked.

“I e-mailed my dean at NYU that I had spoken with a senior Italian government official investigating the Roman Forum incident. I told him this official confirmed that a highly toxic virus was involved and that European and American groups were now on the alert.”

“Anything else?” asked Alex.

“No, nothing else.”

“This is serious. Tom. To break into your apartment, steal your computer. You absolutely have to call the Carabinieri and file a report.”

“If I do call them, it’ll be all over the news tomorrow.”

“Well, it’s not safe here. You can stay at my place until you sort things all out.”

“Thanks, but I couldn’t.”

“No arguments,” Alex said firmly. “I’ve got a sofa bed that my friends use when they visit. Let’s pack your things and get out of here. Whoever broke in might be back.”

An hour later, Tom and Alex were in a cab to her house.

After he was settled, Tom joined Alex in the living room. She had set out two glasses and a bottle of chilled white wine.

“Let’s have that nightcap,” Alex said, pouring the wine.

“I really appreciate your help, Alex.”

“Niente. I have a friend who owns a small hotel not far from the Termini. I’ll call her tomorrow and see if she’ll let you stay at her apartment. It’s on the top floor, which she normally uses, but this summer she’s in New York decorating a boutique hotel she’s opening near Irving Place—her latest project. I’m sure she’ll let you stay. We’ll give you a false name, right?”

“Thanks. I hate to think this is necessary.”

“But it is,” Alex said. “Do you know what I think?”

“No, what?”

“I’d guess that this break-in is more likely Belagri than anyone else.”

“Why do you say this?”

She replied, “Belagri suspects you know a lot more than you told them. And they are extremely anxious to find out about this virus.”

Tom was silent.

Alex said, “Tom, you’re in a hell of a situation. Where is the virus?”

“I don’t know. I can’t find it without O’Boyle, and he as much as said he wouldn’t tell me.”

“And Pulesi or the Centers for Disease Control? They should be able to help, and they’re certainly motivated to get hold of the virus. Or, what about the Catholic Church? O’Boyle’s deeply involved with the Church. Are they involved?”

“O’Boyle told me all the records relating to the virus were destroyed years ago, so that no one currently in the Vatican knows anything about the virus. On the other hand, he warned me about the Church—the rumors that get passed around. I just don’t know.”

Tom went on. “The Italian authorities are another problem. They’re notorious for leaking information and absolutely can’t be trusted. The only Italian I’d be willing to say anything to would be Pulesi. I have to admit that Pulesi was very helpful when I spoke with him, though how do I know that people around him wouldn’t talk? And,” Tom added, “speaking of Pulesi, I saw Crystal Close leave his building just before I arrived.”

“Crystal Close?” Alex’s expression hardened, and she raised an eyebrow. “That woman gets around—inviting you to lunch, offering you a grant, and having a secret meeting with Pulesi.”

“Wait a minute,” said Tom, somewhat defensively. “I don’t know if she met with Pulesi. It’s a very large government building.”

“Okay,” replied Alex, “maybe she didn’t meet with Pulesi. Maybe it was one of his people. How much does Caroline know?”

“Not much. Only that Doc was a colleague of Lily Ross Taylor’s at Bryn Mawr. And, Caroline told me about the aqueduct.”

“Might Doc have been looking for the underground lab?”

“Possibly, but I doubt it. Lily may have told Doc about Visconti’s visit to the cryptoporticus, but I don’t think there’s any reason why Lily would have known about Visconti’s interest in the aqueduct.”

“Shouldn’t you tell Caroline what’s really going on?”

“I’ve been reluctant to. She’s in a very tricky situation. She’d feel obligated to inform the authorities right away, go through channels, protect the interests of the Academy. It would all become a huge mess. And possibly wind up with the virus in the wrong hands. It’s something I need to follow up myself at this point.”

Alex, with some reluctance, agreed.

“I’m worried for you,” she said. “What can I do?”

Tom shook his head. “It’s too dangerous. If they continue to follow me, they’ll follow you as well. I can’t take that chance.”

Tom put down his wine glass. “I need to convince O’Boyle to give me the name of the Swiss banker. Once I locate the virus, I’ll turn it over to the authorities and let them take it from there.”

“Which authorities?” Alex asked.

“What do you mean?” Tom said.

“Well, if you get hold of the virus, which group do you hand it over to? The Italians?”

“No, I don’t trust them.”

“The CDC?” Alex asked.

“Probably. But I don’t know anyone there.”

“So,” said Alex, “we’ll have to figure out how to get it to the right people there.”

“We’ve got work to do,” Tom concluded.

“Just be careful.” Alex stood. “It’s late and a lot has happened tonight. I think you ought to go to bed and get some sleep. I’m going to my bedroom upstairs. This couch pulls out into a bed and has clean sheets on it. Let me show you the bathroom. Will this all be okay?”

“I’ll be fine,” Tom replied. “Thanks.”

“Right,” said Alex. “If you’re at all hungry, by all means go down to the kitchen. Anything you find is fair game.”

Alex looked at Tom. “I’m glad you’re here. I feel safer. I’ll leave a note for Ana to add another place for breakfast tomorrow. Buona notte.”

“I’m sure I’ll wake up early enough, but please get me up if I oversleep. I’ve got a call scheduled at the Academy at 10 a.m.”

“Okay. See you in the morning.”

Alex gave Tom a light kiss. He hugged her.

Then she left Tom to go to her bedroom.

10

A
t precisely 10 a.m., Tom called Darby Smith. Tom was sitting in front of a computer screen that Lucia had set up for him.

Darby began by saying, “Good morning, Tom. I’ve read about the tragic event in the Roman Forum. It was played up big in the
International Herald Tribune
. Even a photograph of you. My condolences.”

“Thanks,” replied Tom. “It’s been a brutal experience that shows no signs of terminating. The Italian authorities cremated the bodies and are treating the incident as if there were a deadly virus involved.”

“Was there?” Darby asked.

“There might have been. If there were, it was a virus that lay dormant for many years. Most unusual. Anyway, I’ve got an idea that your restored wall painting might give me a clue.”

“Really?”

“Yes. If you don’t mind showing me your findings.”

“Okay,” Darby said. “Watch your screen. I’m starting with a tape I made a few years ago in the Valley of the Kings. My plan is to show you my own excavation—Tomb KV5, built as a mausoleum for Ramesses II’s fifty sons, and then move to Imhotep’s tomb, which is what you want to see. But there may be a connection. All right? Stop anytime for questions.”

At that moment Tom saw on his computer screen a vehicle driving across a flat plain with mountains in the background. The vehicle was kicking up a trail of dust. Darby said, “The temperature here, today, like it was in the video, is 107 degrees, and it’s dusty as hell, dry and very hot.”

The vehicle crossed a bridge spanning the Nile. The sky was cloudless, the air clear. The vehicle traveled on a dusty road, with the rising walls of the Valley of the Kings off to the left, and ruins of mortuary temples to the right. The road ended at a visitors’ center and parking area filled with an enormous number of air-conditioned buses.

“Here we are at the Valley of the Kings. There are sixty-three tombs, but I’ve always believed somewhere in this mass of stone there are more tombs to be found.” Darby stopped his narration. “Is the picture coming through okay?”

“Yes,” said Tom. “I feel like I’m actually experiencing it. In fact, memories of my first trip to Luxor are flooding back. It looks the same as I remember it.”

“And it’ll probably look just like this a hundred or a thousand years from now. It’s timeless.”

The camera moved to a shot of an unadorned stone stairway with steps leading below ground. Then the video continued down a half dozen steps into an anteroom lit by an electric floor lamp. Tom concentrated on everything he saw. The rough texture of the limestone walls seemed to have been carved flat. A student, off to the right, was photographing the fragments of a wall painting. An open pit was over to the left.

“We found some parts of a skeleton in that pit,” Smith said, and Tom saw it as a flashlight shone on the contents of the narrow trench.

Darby continued. “Those bones may be the remains of one of Ramesses’s sons, dragged here from his sarcophagus by robbers. His mummy probably contained precious jewelry that the robbers were looking for. If so, they unwrapped the mummy looking for the jewels, which they took, dumping the remains in the pit.

“Take a careful look at the skeleton. It looks normal, right? I want you to notice this skeleton since, when I show you the ones we found in the Imhotep tomb, they are considerably different—they are strangely contorted. Okay, enough of my dig. We’ll move on to Imhotep.”

Tom listened but said nothing.

Darby continued. “In the next valley, the noblemen are buried.” The video showed small villages where Egyptian families had lived for the past two thousand years. Spotted in the midst of a village were entrances to tombs of high priests, rich merchants. The camera focused on a stairway of stone steps. “This tomb belongs to the master architect, Imhotep, who worked for the great Pharaoh Ramesses II. It was discovered in 1922 by Charles Babcock, an American archaeologist. Babcock was a very competent professional who made a remarkable find, which only a handful of people ever knew about because it was totally overshadowed by Howard Carter’s discovery of King Tutankhamen’s tomb just a few days earlier.

“As you already know, Tut’s three cradled gold coffins were undisturbed for nearly three thousand years. The tomb contained the richest trove of artifacts ever found, from one of the most refined cultural periods of mankind: that’s breathtaking stuff. Babcock didn’t have a chance. Yet, in my judgment, what was found in his excavation may outshine the importance of Carter’s discovery.”

“I’m fascinated. Please go on,” Tom said.

“Take a look at this,” Darby said, his voice showing high excitement. The camera panned the interior of the Imhotep tomb. “This is a large square room hewn out of a rock cliff. The inner space is supported by columns, many of which were badly damaged or missing when Babcock first entered. Now we have restored or replaced them. On one section of the wall is a large painting three feet high and five feet long, which my wife and some other members of our team have been able to restore over the past seven years.

“When first found, this key wall painting was in terrible shape. There were certain discernible aspects, but as a whole it was indecipherable. With a great deal of work its story now makes sense. Only recently have we been able to read its hieroglyphs.

“What you’re now looking at are enlarged details of the wall painting. Are you okay with hieroglyphics?”

Tom answered, “Not really.”

Darby continued. “The wall painting depicts the ten plagues that devastated Egypt while Ramesses II was at the peak of his power. You can see dead cattle, rivers that have turned red with blood, soldiers dying or dead. This time of the plagues coincides with the story in the book of Exodus in the Old Testament. Moses pleads with Ramesses to let his people—the Hebrews—follow Moses to the Promised Land. Ramesses refuses. We guess that he refuses because his priests don’t want to lose the manpower that the Hebrew slaves represented.”

As Darby continued with the description of the mural, Tom’s eyes surveyed as much as he could take in, allowing him to examine the painting for evidence of a reference to the virus. The more he saw, the more he realized that this magnificent painting was less involved in telling of the heroic exploits and accomplishments of Imhotep than it was in describing an incredibly devastating plague that threatened to lay waste to Egypt. There were depictions of the canopic jars, but he was more struck by the depiction of men dying, their bodies twisted in death by, Tom could only presume, the virus. Obviously, the artist or artists had a powerful story to tell—perhaps a warning for future generations.

Darby was saying, “Here are close-ups: the first plague was blood, where the fish of the Nile died. The second plague was a multitude of frogs that overran Egypt. The third plague was gnats, lice, or fleas—the word is translated differently. The fourth plague was flies, which only attacked the Egyptians, harming both people and livestock. The fifth plague was an epidemic disease, a virus, which wiped out Egyptian livestock: horses, donkeys, camels, cattle, sheep, and goats. And so forth.”

“Amazing,” said Tom. “The power and beauty of these hieroglyphics. Your wife should be congratulated.”

“And her team,” Darby added. “The tenth and final plague was the death of all Egyptian firstborn males—no one escaped, from the lowest servant to the pharaoh’s own son. The firstborn of the Egyptians and of their livestock were killed—Egyptian culture was virtually obliterated. They are shown in the painting, but they are in horrible, twisted shapes, as if they died in excruciating pain.”

Tom shuddered as he made the connection with the deaths of Doc and Eric and the skeletons found in the underground lab, but chose not to say anything to Darby about this.

“Tom, here’s something I can’t answer, but I’ll point it out to you. How many plagues were there?”

“Ten,” replied Tom.

“That’s right. Count them, however, on the mural.”

Tom, surprised, began to count them. “Eleven, not ten. That’s what I count. But how is this possible? The Bible says ten.”

“Okay,” Darby replied. “Look at each of them, and compare them to the Bible’s account.”

Slowly, Tom went through the hieroglyphs. The pictures related to the Bible’s text, except for the next to last one. This part of the Egyptian mural showed fire enveloping a group of Egyptians, a group of men, women, and children. This figure did not correspond to any of the ten plagues.

Tom was quiet. Darby said, “I don’t have any explanation at all. Besides this panel not being a plague mentioned in the Bible, look at the drawing. There’s one more aspect: this is the only drawing that shows three canopic jars.”

“Four would be expected,” Tom said. “Correct?”

“In a normal burial,” Darby said, “there would be four, one each for the stomach, the intestines, the lungs, and the liver.”

“What about the heart?” asked Tom.

“The heart was thought to be the ‘seat of the soul’ and had to remain with the body,” Darby said. “Our mural shows three canopic jars, which seem identical to the actual canopic jars we found in Imhotep’s tomb. I have to believe that the priests were sending a message by having only three instead of four jars. Furthermore, they were highly out of the ordinary since the contents were not Imhotep’s internal organs, but samples of grains, cow bones, and human tissue.”

“I would guess,” Tom said, “the chief priests decided to preserve these items—certainly not for humans yet to be born, since the Egyptians were focused on themselves and their next world. They might have been making offerings to the sun god, Ra, for his help in ridding Egypt of the plagues . . . or, perhaps the offerings were to ward off future plagues in Imhotep’s afterlife?”

“Good guesses,” Darby replied. “We’ll probably never know for certain. But I suspect the contents of the canopic jars were to protect Imhotep from plagues in the next world. One other finding I should mention is that there were human skeletons in the tomb, which would not normally be there. I think that one explanation is that these bones were those of high priests struck down by the last and final plague, which may have killed Imhotep himself.”

“So the virus struck more than the firstborn of the Egyptians?” Tom asked.

“The wall painting is clear about this, as were the skeletons we found in Imhotep’s tomb. Obviously, these skeletons were not all first sons in their families,” Darby said. “I think that the virus was horrendously powerful as well as pervasive. One of the canopic jars, examined and written up by Babcock in his papers, contained remnants of the victims of the plagues. And the skeletons found in Imhotep’s tomb—most were in contorted positions—suggest that they were victims of the virus as well.”

Darby produced pictures of the dead priests as they had been found in the tomb. “Here’s what’s left of them. After nearly three thousand years, many of these bones are held together by their thin, leathery skin, which keeps them in their contorted positions. To me, they died in extreme discomfort.”

“I’m struck by how different these bones are from those found in your excavation,” Tom said. He then added, “What you’ve found in this Egyptian wall painting is absolutely new information, isn’t it? The Bible focuses on the Hebrews, their oppression and escape, and the power of God, not on the near destruction of Egypt. And, finally, there is the puzzle of the eleventh plague.”

“Right,” said Darby.

“The press release and other archaeologists must have commented on this eleventh plague.”

“You’d think so,” Darby said, “but no one did. I believe that the exciting news is the verification of the biblical text. There are, after all, ten plagues described that match exactly. I guess that the anomaly is simply ignored, since no one has come up with a good theory.” Darby went on. “Before we finish, there’s an odd development that occurred three or four months ago. When we announced our newly restored wall painting, there was immediate and widespread interest among the professionals who follow archaeology. One of the parties that contacted us, and then sent a team, was Belagri, the international bioengineering agriculture company. Have you heard of them?”

“A controversial company,” observed Tom.

“Belagri made a date with me through the Supreme Council of Antiquities—through the secretary general himself. Of course I saw them. When the secretary general summons, I jump. When we actually met Belagri, they said they wished to study the grains that had been found in one of the canopic jars. That seemed harmless enough, I thought, so I agreed to take them to the Cairo Museum to show them.”

“Why would you, or the American University in Cairo where you teach, or the Supreme Council, for that matter, entertain the idea of giving the most controversial bioengineering company in the world access to these precious materials?” asked Tom.

“Money,” Darby said. “The answer’s that simple. They made their case powerfully, that their laboratories are the best positioned in the world to perform DNA analysis on the grains, even though the samples are three thousand years old. They pledged that if they were selected to do this testing, they would report their findings and would give the American University in Cairo one million dollars for use in the further excavation of Tomb KV5, as well as Imhotep’s tomb. Frankly, money talks. We’re always having trouble with obtaining enough funding. Having too little money is why it took us seven years instead of two to excavate the first two chambers of Tomb KV5.

“The Supreme Council and the university, each debated the merits and, in relatively short order, agreed to Belagri’s terms. But, when the director of the Cairo Museum went to find the canopic jars, they were missing. There was a small supply of what had been stored in the jars of grain and bones from the cows, but nothing was left of the human tissue in the museum’s possession. Belagri was given modest-sized samples of the grain and cow bones.”

Tom asked, “Do you know what Belagri found when they analyzed the material?”

Darby said, “No. To my knowledge, Belagri has said nothing about what they have or haven’t found by analyzing the material from the canopic jars.”