Celtic Empire (Dirk Pitt 25)

“What do you mean?” Summer asked.

“Before we left Amarna, I tried to email some photos of the tomb to the NUMA archeology database. I forgot we didn’t have a phone signal, so it didn’t send.”

“But it may have sent,” Dirk said, “when we reached Assiut this morning and got a signal.”

“That’s what I’m thinking. I’m pretty sure I included some pictures of Summer’s stone.”

“If it’s out there,” Summer said, “then Hiram can find it.” She looked at her watch. “It’s just after eleven a.m. in Washington. Let’s give him a try.”

She tapped her keyboard and initiated a video call to NUMA headquarters. After several rings, an image appeared—a lean, fit man with a long ponytail, wearing a Derek and the Dominos T-shirt. He sat at a curved table backed by a massive video board.

“Livingston, I presume?” he asked.

“No, it’s Pitt, Pitt, and Zeibig, I’m afraid.” Summer pivoted the laptop so he could see the others. “You do have the right continent.”

“How’s our wandering band of river nomads?”

“Hot, dusty, and in need of a cold beer.”

“Afraid I can’t help you there.”

“We’re actually looking for some ethereal support as well.” She described the stone and tomb discovery and resulting incidents, and Zeibig’s phantom photo upload.

Hiram Yaeger looked at Summer and nodded. “I’m glad everybody is safe now. As for the download, that’s pure child’s play.” He turned to a computer console and began tapping its keys.

Yaeger served as the head of NUMA’s Computer Resource Center. Despite his hippie appearance, Yaeger was no slacker. He had single-handedly built up the agency’s computing resources to rival those of the major intelligence organizations. A top-of-the-line supercomputer helped drive the horsepower that collected, sorted, and analyzed ocean currents, water temperatures, marine life, and weather conditions from thousands of points around the globe. Before Summer knew it, Yaeger flashed onto the large video board a photo of Amarna from the Nile.

“Is this the one?” he asked. “I located a file on one of the servers that hit Rod’s archeological database about ten hours ago. It contains nothing but JPEG images.”

“That’s the one,” Zeibig said, slapping the table. “Nice work, Hiram. Can you run through the files in order? There should be an early photo or two of a white stone tablet that Summer pulled from the river.”

Yaeger flipped through a dozen photos of the survey boat, the Nile shoreline, and some sonar records, then found a photo of Summer passing up an object from the water. The next showed a close-up of the tablet, still wet from the river.

“That’s it,” Summer said.

More typing came from Yaeger. “I just emailed it back to the three of you.”

“Hiram, while you have it up,” Dirk said, “could you have Max tell us what she thinks of it?”

“Sure,” Yaeger said. “Let me wake up the beast.”

In front of the video board, a striking woman suddenly appeared, dressed in a tight blouse and short skirt. A holographic image modeled after his wife, Max had been created by Yaeger as a user-friendly interface to the complex computer network.

“Good morning, Hiram,” the image said in a seductive voice. “You have company today?”

“Yes, Max, friends in Egypt.” He identified the group on the video call.

“Always a delight to have someone intelligent to talk to.” She turned to her creator and winked. “How may I serve you?”

“Take a look at this photo of a stone tablet that Summer recovered from the Nile off the ancient city of Amarna,” Yaeger said. “What can you tell us about it?”

Max looked at the photo while the computer scanned the image and compared it to an internal archive, followed by a search of dozens of academic and private research databases around the world. In seconds, she displayed a beaming smile.

“Congratulations, Summer,” she said. “You’ve made what appears to be a very ancient and most unique discovery.”

“Except for the fact it has since been stolen,” Summer said. “What can you tell us about it?”

“While not definitive, the slab appears to be made of alabaster, which can be found in numerous desert regions of Upper Egypt, and was used by the ancients in many of their structures and monuments. Though damaged, there is a clear representation of the sun in the manner used to depict the god Aten during the reign of Pharaoh Akhenaten. So it was likely carved during the Eighteenth Dynasty in the New Kingdom era, dating to approximately 1350 B.C.E.”