The Murder of King Tut Read online

  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.”

  Part Three

  Chapter 67

  Palm Beach, Florida

  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?

  Chapter 68

  Valley of the Kings

  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.

  Chapter 69

  Valley of the Kings

  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 subdu
ed 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.

  Chapter 70

  Egyptian Desert

  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.”

  Chapter 71

  Valley of the Kings

  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.

  She nodded to Yuye, her lady-in-waiting, signaling that she did not want to be followed. Then the queen descended the steps.

  The steps led to a hallway, the floor of which dipped gently into the earth. She noted with disappointment the lack of decoration, the walls of bare rock.

  Ankhesenpaaten understood that time was short. Still, a few simple paintings would have been better and more fitting.

  She turned back toward the light at the tomb entrance, checking to see if she had been followed. There was no sign of anyone.

  Ankhesenpaaten breathed a sigh of relief. More than anything, she wanted to be alone right now. She had much to think about.

  The hallway led into a large chamber, and a slightly smaller room lay beyond that. The way was lit by small lamps whose ghostly flickerings danced on the walls.

  The queen was heartened when she finally gazed upon murals depicting Tut’s life. At least he would be remembered here.

  In the center of the small room was Tut’s throne, as if waiting for him to arrive. She walked to it, running her hand along the wood.

  Ankhesenpaaten smiled as she examined the back of the chair where a scene of her anointing him with oil had been carved.

  She remembered the day, or one exactly like it, as if it were yesterday.

  There was another reason she’d come here: Ankhesenpaaten was terrified for her own life.

  She circled the throne, afraid of the emotions welling up inside her. She had never felt so alone before, had never so needed Tut’s reassuring voice. He would have known what to do. She had seen him grow more and more confident in Aye’s presence, so much so that Aye had little or no power over him.

  Tut had been fond of reminding her that Aye and his wife had been little more than glorified servants to their parents. Indeed, Aye’s wife had been Nefertiti’s wet nurse. The queen had nothing to fear from them.

  Ankhesenpaaten took a deep breath, then allowed herself to settle onto the throne. She sat up straight at first, then settled back until she was relaxed in the chair. That was how Tut sat there, not erect, like some tentative ruler, but slumped and secure.

  She could almost hear his voice as she sat there. He would be speaking directly, unafraid to tell the truth to whoever needed to hear it.

  Ankhesenpaaten felt power rising within her, as if Tut himself were giving her confidence. But it was too much. She broke down in tears, sobbing alone in the tomb.

  Tut was gone from this world; there was no getting around it. How would she rule without him?

  His voice came to her, strong and sure: A woman cannot be pharaoh these days. You have two choices-either marry Aye and let him rule, or find a foreign king to occupy the throne. Som
e of her sisters had married Asians. Why should she be different?

  Because they were princesses, and I am the queen-and right now the pharaoh too.

  Ankhesenpaaten stopped crying, but the grief in her heart was great. She didn’t want to marry anyone else and certainly not Aye. But she was the queen, and she had no choice. Whatever plan she followed, it must be for the good of Egypt.

  The queen gazed at the walls again. It was amazing to think that his body would be sealed inside this very room, forever. She desperately wanted to share this chamber with him.

  But she couldn’t worry about that right now. She needed to act quickly.

  Ankhesenpaaten strode from the burial chamber, shoulders back and head high. In her mind she was already composing the letter that might set her free.

  Or possibly get her killed-just like poor Tut.

  Chapter 72

  Valley of the Kings

  April 1324 BC

  EGYPT ’S WEALTHIEST and most prominent citizens had traveled from near and far to mourn the Boy King. They had dressed in their most colorful kilts and gowns and golden collars. The vibrant scene looked out of place amid the valley’s desolation.

  There were so many mourners, and the tomb entrance was so small, that only an elite few were granted the honor of entering it to see where the pharaoh would lie for eternity.

  The sarcophagus was heavy, and the stairs were steep, making the journey to Tut’s final resting place long and laborious. The sweat from the shoulders of the men made their burden slick, and it was obvious that they were struggling not to drop the pharaoh.

  The crowds outside watched anxiously, unprotected from the sun. Even the wealthiest and most delicate women were sweating and miserable, thick eyeliner running down their cheeks. Some were fanned by slaves, who provided just a whisper of relief in the still, hot air.