The Book of the Dead by Douglas Preston, Lincoln Child Page A

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    Nora smiled. The article went on in the same vein, mingling a stew of dire threats with wildly inaccurate historical pronouncements, ending, naturally, with a “demand” by the alleged “Bey of Bolbassa” that the tomb be returned forthwith to Egypt. At the conclusion, almost as an afterthought, a museum official was quoted as saying that several thousand visitors entered the tomb every day and that there had never been an “untoward incident.”
    This article was followed by a flurry of letters from various people, many of them clearly cranks, describing “sensations” and “presences” they had experienced while in the tomb. Several complained of sickness after visiting: shortness of breath, sweats, palpitations, nervous disorders. One, which merited a file all its own, told of a child who fell into the well and broke both his legs, one of which had to be amputated. An exchange of letters from lawyers resulted in a quiet settlement with the family for a sum of two hundred dollars.
    She moved to the next file, which was very slender, and opened it, surprised to find inside a single yellowed piece of cardboard with a label pasted on it:
    Contents moved to Secure Storage
March 22, 1938
Signed: Lucien P. Strawbridge
Curator of Egyptology

    Nora turned this card over in surprise. Secure Storage? That must be what was now known as the Secure Area, where the museum kept its most valuable artifacts. What inside this file could have merited being locked away?
    She replaced the piece of cardboard and put the file aside, making a mental note to follow up on this later. There was just one final bundle to go. Unsealing it, Nora found it to be full of correspondence and notes on the building of the pedestrian tunnel connecting the IND line subway station to the museum.
    The correspondence was voluminous. As Nora read through it, she began to realize that the story the museum told—that the tomb had been sealed off because of the construction of the tunnel—was not exactly true. The truth, in fact, was just the opposite: the city wanted to route the pedestrian walkway from the front of the station well past the entrance of the tomb—a quicker and cheaper alternative. But for some reason, the museum wished to situate the tunnel toward the far end of the station. Then they argued that the new route would cut off the tomb’s entrance and force its closure. It seemed as if the museum wanted to force the closure of the tomb.
    She read on. Toward the end of the file, she found a handwritten note, from the same Lucien P. Strawbridge who’d placed the earlier file in Secure Storage, scribbled on a memo from a New York City official asking why the museum wanted the pedestrian walkway in that particular location, given the extra costs involved.
    The marginalia read:

    Tell him anything. I want that tomb closed. Let us not miss our last, best chance to rid ourselves of this damnable problem.
    L. P. Strawbridge

    Damnable problem? Nora wondered just what kind of problem Strawbridge was referring to. She flipped through the file again, but there didn’t seem to be a problem connected with the tomb, beyond the annoyance of the Bey of Bolbassa’s comments and the crank letters they had generated.
    The problem, she decided, must be in the file in Secure Storage. In the end, it didn’t seem relevant, and she had run out of time. When she had time, she might look into it. As it was, if she didn’t get started on her report, she’d never make dinner with Bill.
    She pulled her laptop toward her, opened a new file, and began typing.

15

    T he following day, Captain of Homicide Laura Hayward showed her ID and was deferentially ushered into the office of Jack Manetti, head of security for the New York Museum of Natural History. Hayward liked the fact that, in a museum where the administration seemed overly concerned with status, the head of security had chosen for himself a small, windowless office in the back of the security pool, and