The Murder of King Tut (16 page)

Carnarvon rebuffed him. He was through with the valley. There would be no more excavations with his money. Their partnership
was over. “I’m so sorry, Howard. I’m nearly as sad about this as you are,” Carnarvon said.

The news would have been even more crushing to Carter if he had not anticipated this moment and planned his next move. He
cleared his throat. “There’s one last tomb to be found, sir. I’m sure of it. So sure that if you will allow me to make use
of your concession in the valley, I will fund the next year of digging myself. Of course,” he added hastily, “we would split
whatever I find evenly.”

Carnarvon was astounded. “You don’t have that kind of money,” he exclaimed.

“I’ll find the money, sir.”

“You will? To pay the wages of a hundred diggers? To pay for the guards? To feed yourself?”

Carter offered a rare smile. “I’m not all that hungry, for food that is. I suppose I will need cigarette money.”

Carnarvon squinted as he rubbed a manicured hand across his face. He was touched by this show of faith. “I will fund one more
year. But just one, Howard. This is your last chance. Find King Tut, or we’re done.”

Present Day

“WHAT ARE YOU SMILING ABOUT, Jim?” asked Susan. My wife was standing in the doorway to my office. She’s tall and blond, like
a femme fatale from a forties film noir—though a femme fatale from Wisconsin.

I had just hung up the phone—with Marty Du-gard, actually. “My gut feeling is getting stronger. Tut was murdered, Sue. I just
have to figure out who killed the poor guy.”

“A hunch doesn’t mean very much if you can’t prove it,” she said. “Am I missing something?”

“Oh, I’ll prove it,” I said with a grin. “And thanks for the vote of confidence.”

“Anytime,” she called over her shoulder. Femme fatale? Definitely.

Sue had a point though. How was I going to prove that Tut hadn’t died from wounds suffered in his chariot crash? That was
the most widely accepted theory about his death.

My most popular fictional character, Dr. Alex Cross, lives by his hunches and instincts. Quite possibly that’s because I do
as well. At that moment, I felt I was gathering evidence that Tut had been murdered and that I would soon know who was responsible
for Tut’s death—perhaps someone you might not expect.
That
was what had me excited now.

I had been making notes on a new Cross manuscript before the call from Marty Dugard. The pages were stacked in a pile on my
desk, next to pages from a dozen other projects I had in the works.

That’s pretty much the way of my workday: up at 5:00 a.m., write and edit, take a break—maybe golf, maybe a movie—then get
back to it. Seven days a week. I have an ability, or a curse, to focus on several projects at once. But Tut was distracting
me from all the other projects.

Ignoring the Cross manuscript, I reached for my list of pharaohs.

The New Kingdom, as the era spanning the Eighteenth to Twentieth Dynasties was known, had lasted a little more than five hundred
years. There were thirty-two pharaohs during that time, but the ones I was interested in were Tut and the man who succeeded
him. It seemed reasonable to presume that the person who had the most to gain by Tut’s death was the man ascending to the
throne after him. Follow the money, follow the power.

I ran my finger down the list. Right then, a gust of wind blew in through the open window, scattering part of the Cross manuscript
on the floor. I half wondered whether some ancient Egyptian god had been responsible for that. Or was it part of the pharaoh’s
curse?

I read the succession of kings out loud. “Amenhotep II, Tuthmosis IV, Amenhotep III, Akhenaten, Nefertiti, Tutankhamen…”

Then I stopped.

Not just the next name but the next
two
names held my attention. I had looked at this roster before, but only now was I beginning to realize what it could mean.
These weren’t only names—they were pieces of a puzzle that hadn’t been solved for thousands of years.

Staring at them, I began to think that I wasn’t studying a random act of murder but a cold-blooded conspiracy. There was that
gut instinct of mine again—the reason, I think, that
Time
magazine had once called me “The Man Who Can’t Miss.”

We’d see about that soon, wouldn’t we?

November 1, 1922

THE MEN WERE ASSEMBLED for work, usually a twelve-hour day, sunrise to sunset. Carter knew most of them by name or sight after
working the valley year after year. They carried their digging tools casually over their shoulders and wore thin sandals and
flowing white shirts that extended to their ankles.

“
Mabrook,
” they called out in greeting, their smiles a sure sign that they were ready for a brand-new season with their demanding boss
man.

Carter tried to appear upbeat, but now even he was racked by self-doubt.

“We had now dug in the valley for several seasons with extremely scanty results,” he wrote in a rare candid moment. “After
these barren years, were we justified going on with it?”

He had decided that they were and had convinced Lord Carnarvon to wager another several thousand pounds. Nodding to his foreman,
Reis Ahmed Gerigar, Carter gave the official order to start.

They were beginning two months earlier than usual, hoping to finish their work before the tourist season began.

Near where he stood, just in front of the cavernous opening to the tomb of Rameses VI, rose a triangle of ruins first excavated
five years earlier—a chain of ancient workmen’s huts.

“They were probably used by the laborers in the tomb of Rameses. These huts, built about three feet above bedrock, covered
the whole area in front of the Ramesside tomb and continued in a southerly direction to join up with a similar group of huts
on the opposite side of the valley, discovered by Davis in connection with his work on the Akhenaten cache,” Carter noted
dutifully.

First, Carter’s men would record the precise location and dimensions of each hut. Then they would remove the huts and dig
down through the soil to the bedrock.

Only when they struck bedrock could they begin stripping away the remaining sand and dirt to search for the seam in the earth
that might lead to Tut and his tomb. A tomb architect would have cut straight down into the rock to create the most solid
and long-lasting burial place imaginable. There would be a descending staircase perhaps or a long-buried passageway to mark
the opening.

Or so Carter hoped.

He peered closely at the earth to reassure himself. Beneath the stone huts stood three feet of loose rock and sand, the former
courtesy of the slaves and prisoners who had carved the tomb of Rameses VI. This was where stone chipped from inside the tomb
had been dumped. The sand had funneled in with a landslide.

“I had always had a kind of superstitious feeling that in that particular corner of the valley one of the missing kings, possibly
Tutankhamen, might be found,” Carter wrote in a journal that could have filled several books like this one.

But a strong gut feeling was all he had to go on. Certainly, this was the very last part of the valley that had not been fully
explored. But who could say if or when another lost treasure would be found.

Carter fell into the habit of watching the men working. They talked nonstop, gossiping about their friends and wives as their
turias dug into the rocky soil. The tools clanked when hitting rock, and the work had a cadence that was almost musical to
Carter’s ear.

Despite their chattiness, his men were deliberate and precise. Years of toil in the valley had made them proficient Egyptologists
in their own right. They knew when to proceed cautiously and when to move earth with abandon.

So there was little for Carter to do but stand and watch and hope this would be his year. No matter how fast his crew moved,
excavating down to the bedrock would take days. He thought it might be better to return home, get out of the sun, and unpack
the food and wine that had just arrived from London.

But he stayed on at the site anyway, preferring to endure what he called the creeping “doubts, born of previous disappointments,”
there than at his home.

He lit another cigarette and watched the dirt fly.

November 4, 1922

IT WAS DAWN, three days into the season. Thus far nothing had been found, and there seemed to be no particular reason to hope
that anything would be found.

The first day’s optimism had already given way to grumbling and low morale. The diggers were still chatty but seemed subdued
and disappointed, almost as if they had already given up.

A young boy, a worker’s son, played happily in the loose sand. His job was to tote water, but the sun wasn’t high enough yet
for the men to be thirsty, so he contented himself by pretending to be one of the diggers.

The boy knew to keep away from the ancient workmen’s huts where the men dug, so he dug into the ground nearby with a pair
of sticks he had carried from home early that morning.

The sand was fine and not at all hard. It didn’t take much effort for him to plunge his sticks into the ground.

One stick hit something solid! His heart beat a little faster as he began wondering what it might be. He dropped his stick
and started to use his hands to push back the soil.

The boy looked around to see if anyone had noticed him. He was fearful that someone would see him digging and take credit
for whatever he had discovered.

A solid object soon revealed itself. It was flat and smooth and made of stone. The more dirt he cleared away, the more the
boy could see that the object was something very worthwhile indeed.

It was a step.

Here, not where the men were digging.

Someone long ago had carved the step out of bedrock. Time and the elements had covered it over until this young water boy,
thousands of years later, reclaimed it from the earth with a pair of twigs.

The boy looked around again, making sure no one had seen him.

Quickly, he pulled the sand back into the hole and carefully marked the spot. Then he ran off to tell Mr. Howard Carter about
the mysterious stairway.

1324 BC

“HALT THE EXCAVATION!”

The voice echoed down the corridor above the din of hammering and chipping.

The overseer was furious. No one but the pharaoh could issue such an order.

He planted his feet, placed one callused hand on each hip, and turned to glare at this offensive idiot, whoever he might be.

He heard footsteps slapping down the corridor, then the angry cries of workmen who were being trampled on by the interloper.
Of course, they were prisoners of war and petty criminals who would be executed when the job was finished to keep the tomb’s
location a secret. He cared little that they were inconvenienced.

A royal page skittered to a halt directly in front of the overseer. He wore a fashionable kilt and an extra-heavy application
of eyeliner that had begun to run in the heat.

The overseer believed that the man worked for the royal vizier, though he wasn’t certain. Either way, it was best to keep
his temper in check. He forced himself to count to ten, lest he smack the man across his arrogant face.

“By what right do you barge into my construction site and issue such a decree?” the overseer said in measured syllables.

“By order of the royal vizier,” replied the page.

The overseer calmed down a little. “I’m listening. By order of the vizier,
what?
”

“The pharaoh is dead.” The page leaned forward and whispered in a voice so low that the overseer could barely hear. “There
are rumors that he has been murdered and that more deaths will follow.”

The overseer’s shock was evident, which pleased the gossipy page. “Is this a secret?” asked the overseer.

“The biggest. If I were you, I would not repeat it.”

“You just did.”

“You are not me, grave digger.”

There was a moment of strained silence. The overseer was so consumed with the astounding news that it took a moment for the
ramifications to sink in.

“I can’t finish this tomb in seventy days,” he said, alluding to the prescribed mourning, embalming, and mummification period
before a pharaoh would be sealed inside the ground for eternity. “It is impossible.”

“That is why I have come. We will finish
this
tomb later. The pharaoh will be buried in the tomb at the center of the valley.”

The overseer was once again astonished. “That is no tomb for a pharaoh. It is a trifle. Just four rooms and the narrowest
of hallways. It is a closet!”

“Yes, but it is a finished closet.”

“It still needs to be painted,” replied the overseer, trying to maintain some control over the situation. It was customary
to paint scenes from the pharaoh’s life and his journey into the afterworld on the walls in vivid colors.

“Exactly. You had better get your men painting pretty pictures.”

“Stop the excavation!” roared the overseer. He paused and then looked at the page curiously.

“Who will—”

“Inherit this tomb?” answered the page, anticipating the words.

The overseer nodded.

“The royal vizier has graciously offered to take it off the pharaoh’s hands.”

1324 BC

ANKHESENPAATEN STOOD ATOP the stone steps that led down into her husband’s tomb. The funeral was more than two months away,
but she wanted to see for herself where he would rest for eternity.

The mummies of their dead children would be interred here too. But she was destined to be far away, in the Valley of the Queens.
The thought of that separation filled her with grief, even though she knew they would meet again in the afterlife.