Celtic Empire (Dirk Pitt 25)

Gunn leaned forward as he read the article. Then he slumped into his seat and loosened his tie. “Hiram,” he said. “I think we’re going to need some coffee.”

33

St. Julian Perlmutter was seated at his kitchen table, wearing his favorite paisley robe, when the phone rang. He reached past a stack of open books and a plate of half-eaten Danish, to answer a brass telephone salvaged from a 1940s luxury liner.

“Perlmutter,” he said in a gruff baritone that originated deep in his massive frame.

“Hi, Julian. It’s Summer.”

“Well, hello, Miss Pitt.” His voice melted to jocularity. “How are things in the Nile Valley?”

“Insufferably hot, and as dry as a naked martini. I hope I didn’t wake you.”

Perlmutter glanced at an antique clock mounted above the stove, which read eight-fifteen a.m. “Not at all. Been up since five, poking around with your inquiry.”

“So you received my email?”

“Indeed. It’s quite a tale you two have cooked up. Egyptian princesses and ancient plagues.”

“It does sound rather unbelievable,” she said. “That’s why we wanted to run it by your learned eye, as well as to ask if you had any research on Princess Meritaten fleeing Egypt by sea.”

Perlmutter, a longtime friend of the Pitt family, was perhaps the world’s foremost marine historian. His Georgetown house outside of Washington was packed to the rafters with ship logbooks, sailing narratives, and maritime history books. The heavily built historian, known for his fondness of gourmet dining, had an encyclopedic knowledge of sea vessels, from the first dugout canoes to the latest cruise ships.

He chuckled into the phone. “I’m no Egyptologist, but I know a good one, Bob Samuelson out of Columbia. We had a nice chat about your discoveries. He confirmed your findings about the Habiru and their connection to Meritaten are quite stunning, particularly the Amarna mural that may depict a plague.

“As your British archeologist noted,” Perlmutter said, “there’s evidence of a widespread epidemic during the reign of Akhenaten that may have killed members of the royal family. Dr. Samuelson noted an interesting fact. After Akhenaten, no pharaoh sired a male heir for nearly fifty years. At least in his lineage, there was a long-term absence of male offspring.”

“That’s curious,” Summer said. “Whatever the plague, Meritaten may have had some sort of cure in the form of the Apium of Faras.”

“Our interpretation as well. Do we know if the child in the Amarna tomb died from this plague?”

“The tomb mural seems to

indicate that, but with the mummy stolen, we’ll never know.”

“Of course. It seems as if someone is going to quite a bit of trouble to conceal the young princess and her connection to the Habiru. Or perhaps the curative.”

“That’s our conclusion as well,” Summer said. “We have Hiram Yaeger on the hunt for what the Apium of Faras might actually be. We hoped you might shed some light on where Meritaten may have sailed in her bid to escape.”

“I do have information on the the travels of an Egyptian princess,” he said. “You see, the ancient Egyptians were in fact excellent sailors and shipbuilders. The first use of a sail may well have been on a reed boat in the Nile, and later they constructed huge barges to transport stone for their construction projects. In the New Kingdom period, when Akhenaten ruled, Egypt was known to trade with mainland Greece and as far away as the Horn of Africa. So there’s no doubt our Princess Meritaten had the means to travel a great distance in a sailing vessel, or perhaps a fleet. And apparently she did.”

“You found evidence of her voyage?”

“And quite a bit more. The archeologists tell us there’s been no discovery of her burial in Egypt, so it’s safe to look beyond. There we find circumstantial evidence she may have traveled to the Iberian Peninsula and established a settlement near Amposta, Spain, south of Barcelona.”

“That sounds logical,” Summer said. “Just across the Mediterranean, yet beyond the reach of Egyptian authorities. That’s a marvelous discovery, Julian. Are there ruins in Spain that Dirk and I should examine?”

“You won’t want to waste your time there, as she didn’t stay in Spain long. In fact, you’ll want to look quite a bit farther north,” Perlmutter said. “It seems our Egyptian princess was well traveled—and she had a more profound impact on history than you could have imagined.”

“What could that be?”

Perlmutter let out a chuckle. “Would you believe, my dear, nothing short of founding a Celtic empire?”

34

Loren shook her head, then closed the window. “Slow down! I agreed to the car. I didn’t say you could drive like a madman.”

Pitt shrugged. “It’s the car’s fault. It just wants to swallow the road.”