The Third Gate (3 page)

“Once you’re on board
that
,” he said.

2

There were five people on the plane: a crew of two, Logan, Rush, and a CTS staffer bearing two laptops and several folders stuffed with what appeared to be lab results. Once the jet was airborne, Ethan Rush excused himself and walked to the rear to meet with the staffer. Logan fished the latest issue of
Nature
out of his duffel bag and browsed through it, looking for any new discoveries—or anomalies—that might interest him professionally. Then, feeling drowsy, he set the magazine aside and closed his eyes, intending to doze for five or ten minutes. But when he awoke it was dark outside and Logan felt the disoriented haze of a long, deep sleep. Rush looked over at him from the seat across the aisle.

“Where are we?” Logan asked.

“Coming into Heathrow.” He nodded at the staffer, still sitting in the rear. “Sorry about that—like you, I don’t know exactly how
long I’m going to be away, and there was some CTS business that couldn’t wait for my return.”

“Not a problem.” Logan peered out at the lights of London, spread out like a vast yellow blanket beneath them. “Is this our destination?”

Rush shook his head. Then he smiled. “You know, I found it kind of funny, the way you boarded the plane without question. I thought you’d at least do a double take.”

“In my profession you tend to travel a lot. I always carry a passport.”

“Yes, I read that in an article about you. That’s why I didn’t ask you to bring one.”

“In the last six months I’ve been to at least as many foreign countries: Sri Lanka, Ireland, Monaco, Peru, Atlantic City.”

“Atlantic City isn’t a foreign country,” Rush said with a laugh.

“Felt like one to me.”

They landed and taxied to a private hangar, where the CTS staffer deplaned with the laptops and the folders to catch a commercial flight back to New York. Rush and Logan ate a light dinner while the jet refueled. When they were once again in the air, Rush took a seat beside Logan, a black leather briefcase in one hand.

“I’m going to show you a picture,” he said. “I think it will explain the need for secrecy.” Unsnapping the case, he opened it slightly. Rummaging inside, he pulled out a copy of
Fortune
and briefly showed it to Logan.

On the cover was a headshot of a man in his mid-fifties. His thick, prematurely snow-white hair was parted down the middle: a strangely anachronistic look that reminded Logan of a schoolboy from a Victorian-era English public school, Eton or Harrow or Rugby. He was thin, a look accentuated by the heavy backlighting of the photograph. The soft, almost feminine contours of his face were sharply offset by unusually weathered skin, as if by exposure to sun or wind; and though the man was not smiling, there was a faint amused glint in his blue eyes as he stared at the camera, as if at some private joke he was disinclined to share with the world.

Logan recognized the face—and, as Rush had promised, much of the mystery suddenly became understandable. The face belonged to H. Porter Stone, without doubt the most famous—and by far the richest—treasure hunter in the world. Though “treasure hunter” was probably unfair, Logan decided: Stone had been trained as an archaeologist and had taught the subject at UCLA before his discovery of two ships from the Spanish Plate Fleet, sunk in 1648 in international waters. Those vessels—stuffed with silver, gold, and gemstones, on their way back to Spain from the colonies—instantly made Stone not only extremely wealthy but notorious. That notoriety only increased with his subsequent discoveries: an Incan mausoleum and treasure trove hidden in a mountain col twenty miles from Machu Picchu; after that, an immense cache of carved soapstone birds, animals, and human figures beneath a hill complex in the primeval ruins of Great Zimbabwe. Others had followed in remarkably rapid succession.
What ancient civilization
, a banner on the magazine cover asked,
will he pillage next?

“That’s where we’re going?” Logan asked incredulously. “A treasure hunt? An archaeological dig?”

Rush nodded. “A little of both, actually. Stone’s latest project.”

“What is it?”

“You won’t be in the dark for long.” And Rush opened the case again. As Logan glanced over, he saw the doctor slip the magazine beneath a thin stack of papers. It was only the briefest of glimpses, but Logan noticed the papers were covered with what he thought were hieroglyphs.

Rush closed the case. “I
can
tell you this is his biggest expedition yet. And the most secret. In addition to the usual need to operate below the radar, there are certain … unusual logistical issues, as well.”

Logan nodded. He wasn’t surprised: Stone’s expeditions had become increasingly high profile. They tended to attract a lot of attention, both from a curious press and would-be interlopers. Now, instead of supervising the work himself, Stone had become famously reclusive, directing his expeditions
à la distance
, frequently from
halfway around the world. “I have to ask. What exactly is your interest in this? It can’t have anything to do with your Center: any bodies that interest Stone will definitely be dead.
Long
dead.”

“I’m medical officer for the expedition. But I also have another, more indirect interest.” Rush hesitated. “Look, I really don’t mean to be coy. There are some things you can’t learn until you’re actually at the site. But I can say there are certain, um,
peculiar
aspects to this dig that have arisen in the last week or so. That’s where you come in.”

“Okay. Then here’s a question that maybe you can answer. Back in your office, you mentioned you were an anesthesiologist before founding the Center. If so, what were you doing working a shift in the emergency room the day your wife was brought in? That should have been years behind you.”

The smile on Rush’s face faded. “That’s a question I used to hear all the time. Before Jennifer’s NDE, that is. I always gave a flippant answer. The fact is, Jeremy, I trained as an ER specialist. But somehow, I could never get used to the death.” He shook his head. “Ironic, isn’t it? Oh, I could handle natural causes all right: the cancer and pneumonia and nephritis. But sudden, violent death …”

“For an ER doctor, that’s quite a millstone,” Logan replied.

“You said it. That fear of death—of dealing with it, I mean—is why I changed fields, became an anesthesiologist instead of an ER doc. But it still haunted me. Running away did no good: I
had
to be able to stare death in the eye. So to keep my hand in, so to speak, I did ER duty every other week. Sort of like wearing a hair shirt.”

“Or like Mithradates,” Logan said.

“Who?”

“Mithradates the Sixth, king of Pontus. He was in constant fear of being poisoned. So he tried to inure himself by taking sublethal doses every day, until his system was hardened against it.”

“Taking poison to develop an immunity to it,” Rush said. “Sounds like what I was doing, all right. Anyway, after the experience with my wife, I left medical practice entirely and founded the
clinic. I stopped trying to fight my aversion to death. Instead I’ve put it to positive use: studying those who have escaped its embrace.”

“I have to ask. Why found your own clinic? I mean, it’s my understanding there are already several organizations devoted to near-death experiences. Graduate students are majoring in NDEs and ‘consciousness studies.’ ”

“That’s true. But none of them are as large, as centralized, or as focused as CTS. And besides, we’ve branched out into some unique avenues of study.”

He excused himself and Logan turned to the window, looking out into blackness. It was a clear night, and a brief study of the constellations confirmed they were traveling east. But where, exactly? It seemed Porter Stone had sent expeditions to just about every corner of the globe: Peru, Tibet, Cambodia, Morocco. The man had what the news accounts liked to call the Midas touch: it seemed every project he undertook turned to gold.

Logan thought of the briefcase, and the sheets of paper covered with hieroglyphs. Then he closed his eyes.

When he awoke again, it was morning. He stretched, shifted in his seat, peered once again out the window. Below him now, he could make out a broad brown river, with narrow strips of green fringing its banks. Beyond lay an arid landscape. Then he froze. There, on the horizon, was an unmistakable, monolithic shape: a pyramid.

“I knew it,” he breathed.

Rush was seated across the aisle. Hearing this, he glanced over.

“We’re in Egypt,” Logan said.

Rush nodded.

Despite a carefully cultivated stoicism, Logan felt a shiver of excitement. “I’ve always wanted to work in Egypt.”

Rush sighed—half in amusement and half, perhaps, in regret. “I hate to disappoint you, Dr. Logan,” he said. “But actually, it’s nothing quite as straightforward as Egypt.”

3

Logan had been in Cairo only once before, as a graduate student documenting the movements of Frisian soldiers during the Fifth Crusade. And it seemed to him—as they drove along the highway from Cairo International—as if all the cars he’d noticed twenty years before were still on the road. Ancient Fiats and Mercedes Benzes, sporting dents and broken headlights, jockeyed frantically for position, making their own impromptu lanes at sixty miles per hour. They passed buses, decrepit and rusting, people hanging precariously from empty frames where the passenger entrances ought to have been. Now and then Logan caught sight of late-model European sedans, brilliantly polished and almost invariably black. But aside from these exceptions, the freeway traffic seemed one feverish anachronism, a time capsule from an earlier age.

Logan and Rush sat in the rear of the car, silently taking in
the sights. Logan’s luggage had been left on the plane, and their driver—a local driving a Renault only slightly less aged than those around them—had expertly navigated the maze of airport access roads and was now headed into Cairo proper. Logan saw block after block of almost identical cement buildings, painted mustard, a half-dozen stories high. Clothes were drying on balconies; windows were covered with canvas awnings displaying a confusing welter of advertisements. The flat roofs were festooned with satellite dishes, and innumerable cables hung between buildings. A faint orange pall hung over everything. The heat, the unblinking sun, were merciless. Logan leaned out the wide-open window, gasping in the diesel-heavy air.

“Fourteen million people,” Dr. Rush said, glancing his way. “Crammed into two hundred square miles of city.”

“If Egypt isn’t our destination, why are we here?”

“It’s just a brief stop. We’ll be back in the air before noon.”

As they approached the city center and left the highway for local roads, traffic grew even denser. To Logan, every intersection seemed like the approach to the Lincoln Tunnel: a dozen cars all struggling to squeeze into one or two lanes. Pedestrians flooded the streets, taking advantage of the gridlock to cross willy-nilly, missing cars by scant inches. Somehow, grievous injury was avoided. Downtown, the buildings were no taller, but the architecture was more interesting, oddly reminiscent of the Rive Gauche. Security became increasingly evident: black-uniformed police were posted in booths at intersections; hotels and department stores had their frontages blocked by concrete fortifications to prevent car bombings. They passed the US Embassy, a fortress bristling with .50-caliber machine-gun posts.

A few minutes later, the car abruptly pulled to the curb and stopped. “We’re here,” Rush said, opening his door.

“Where’s ‘here’?”

“The Museum of Egyptian Antiquities.” And Rush stepped out of the car.

Logan followed, careful to avoid the press of bodies, the cars that passed close enough to ruffle the fabric of his shirt. He glanced up at
the grand facade of rose-colored stone across the entrance plaza. He had been here, too, during his graduate research. The tingle of excitement that he’d first felt on the plane grew stronger.

They crossed the plaza, fending off trinket sellers hawking glow-in-the-dark pyramids and battery-powered toy camels. Bursts of high-speed Arabic peppered Logan from all sides. They passed a brace of guards flanking the main entrance. Just before stepping inside, Logan heard a voice, crackling with amplification, suddenly rise above the din of traffic and the chatter of package-deal tourists: the chant of the muezzin in the local mosque across Tahrir Square, calling the faithful to prayer. As he paused, listening, Logan heard the call taken up by another mosque, then another, the chant moving Doppler-like into greater and greater distances, until it seemed to echo across the entire city.

He felt a tug at his elbow. It was Rush. Logan turned and stepped inside.

The ancient structure was crowded even at this early hour, but the sweaty throngs had not yet warmed the stone galleries. After the fierce sunlight, the interior of the museum seemed exceedingly dark. They made their way through the ground floor, past innumerable statuary and stone tablets. Despite signs bearing warnings against camera usage and forbidding the touching of artifacts, Logan noticed that—even now—many of the exhibits were still open to the air rather than hermetically sealed, and showed signs of extensive handling. Passing the last of the galleries, they mounted a broad flight of stairs to the first floor. Here were row upon row of sarcophagi, laid out on stone plinths like sentinels of the shadow world. Along the walls were glass-fronted cabinets containing funerary objects of gold and faience, the cases locked with simple seals of lead and wire.

“Mind if I take a moment to inspect the grave goods of Ramses III?” Logan asked, pointing toward a doorway. “I believe it’s down that passage. I recently read in the
Journal of Antiquarian Studies
of a certain alabaster canopic vase one could use to summon—”

But Rush smiled apologetically, pointed at his watch, and merely urged Logan on.

They made their way to another staircase—this one narrower, missing its banister—and climbed to the next floor. It was much quieter here, the galleries devoted to more scholarly collections: inscribed stelae; fragments of papyri, faded and decaying. The lighting was dim, the stone walls grimy. Once Rush stopped to consult a tiny floor plan he pulled from his pocket, hand-sketched on a scrap of paper.