The Pharaoh's Secret (NUMA Files 13)

“If he painted this, it means he survived the battle,” Kurt noted. “I’m guessing he brought home some souvenirs.”

The D’Campions exchanged glances once again. Finally, Nicole spoke. “Tell them, Etienne. We have nothing to hide.”

Etienne nodded, drank the last swallow of his cognac and set the glass back down. “Emile did indeed survive the battle and commemorate it with that painting. If you look to the corner opposite his name, you’ll see a small rowboat with a group of men in it. That’s him and several of Napoleon’s finest. They were on their way back to the flagship L’Orient when the fighting began.”

“I’m guessing they didn’t reach L’Orient,” Kurt said.

“No,” Etienne said. “They were forced to take shelter aboard a different vessel. You would know it as the Wi

lliam Tell—or, in French, Guillaume Tell.”

Kurt had spent half his life studying naval warfare, he knew the name. “The Guillaume Tell was Admiral Villeneuve’s ship.”

“Rear Admiral Pierre-Charles Villeneuve was second in command of the fleet. He was in charge of four ships that day. But even as the battle turned badly against his comrades, he refused to engage.”

Etienne walked over and pointed to a vessel set off from the rest. “This is Villeneuve’s ship,” he said. “Waiting and watching. Interminably, it must have seemed to the others. By morning, the tide of battle was still against them, but the tide in the bay had changed. Villeneuve weighed anchor, set his sails and rode the tide out to sea, escaping with his four ships and my great-great-grandfather.”

He turned from the painting to face Kurt. “Not surprisingly, Villeneuve’s act is one I’ve always been deeply conflicted about. While it shines a poor light on French courage and esprit de corps, I might not be here today had Villeneuve not cut and run.”

“Discretion is the better part of valor,” Renata noted, joining the conversation. “Though I’m sure the rest of the fleet didn’t see it that way.”

“No,” Etienne said, “they didn’t.”

Kurt put the pieces together in his mind, thinking aloud as he went. “After the battle, Villeneuve came here to Malta and was eventually captured by the British when they took the island.”

“Correct,” Etienne said.

“I don’t normally interrupt epic sea stories,” Joe said, “but can we get back to your ancestor and what he found in Egypt?”

“Of course,” Etienne said. “From his diary, I’ve gathered that he excavated several tombs and monuments. All in places where the early Egyptians buried their pharaohs. And by excavated, I mean Napoleon’s men grabbed everything they could carry: artwork, markers, obelisks and carvings. They chiseled entire panels from the walls, hauled off countless jars and pots, sending a steady train of material back to the fleet. Unfortunately, most of the haul was aboard L’Orient when it blew itself to pieces.”

“Most but not all,” Kurt said.

“Precisely,” Etienne said. “The last batch of treasure—if you want to call it that—was right there with him in that rowboat with the sailors when an argument broke out. Emile was under strict orders to deliver all he found to the care of Admiral Brueys on L’Orient, but the English had already broken through the line and three of their vessels were surrounding the French flagship.”

Etienne glanced at Renata. “Discretion came into play again,” he said, repeating her word. “They turned toward the only ships that were unengaged, and the last few trunks of Egyptian art ended up in Villeneuve’s hands, escaping destruction when he sailed for Malta and arrived there two weeks after the battle.”

“And those trunks were put on board the Sophie Celine several months later,” Kurt said.

“So it’s believed,” Etienne said. “Though the record is somewhat unclear. At any rate, this is what our violent little friends were demanding to see when they appeared: anything Emile had gathered in Egypt, especially in Abydos, the City of the Dead.”

“City of the Dead,” Kurt repeated, staring into the fire and then turning to Joe. The exact words Joe had used to describe Lampedusa. Certainly it was an island of the dead. Or the nearly dead. “These artifacts didn’t have anything to do with a mist capable of killing thousands at one time, did they?”

Etienne looked stunned. “As a matter of fact, they refer to something called the Black Mist.”

Kurt suspected as much.

“But that’s not all,” Etienne said. “Emile’s translation also speaks of something else. Something he called the Angel’s Breath, which is admittedly a Westernization. The more correct term, the Egyptian term, would be the Mist of Life: a mist so fine it was believed to have come from the realm beyond this one—the afterlife—where the god Osiris used it to restore to the living whomever he wished. Taken literally, this Angel’s Breath was capable of bringing the dead back to life.”

38

“Capable of bringing the dead back to life?” Kurt repeated the words. He knew immediately what they were dealing with. It had to be the cure to this Black Mist, the very thing that kept the attacker on Lampedusa alive and conscious when everyone else was overcome by the paralytic cloud.

“It’s the antidote,” he said.

“Antidote?” Etienne said. “Antidote to what? Certainly not to dying.”

“To a certain kind of death,” Kurt said.