"I'm hungry," Ronnie said.

  He reached in his pack and took out a power bar. The rustle when he unwrapped it was loud in the tomb.

  "I don't believe you," Lamont said.

  "If I'm going to die here, I'm not going to do it on an empty stomach," Ronnie said.

  "Nobody's going to die here," Nick said.

  "Listen," Selena said.

  "Listen to what?" Ronnie said.

  "Be quiet and listen."

  "I don't hear anything," Lamont said.

  "Figures," Ronnie said. "With all the stuff you blew up over the last few years, you're damn near deaf as a post."

  "Will you two shut up?" Selena said.

  They listened. From somewhere came a distant sound of running water.

  "That sounds like water," Nick said. "How can there be water here?"

  "We need to find where that sound is coming from," Selena said.

  "There's no water here," Lamont said. He moved the beam from his light around the chamber, watching it gleam off the objects of gold.

  Ronnie said, "All this gold, and it doesn't help us at all. Kind of makes you think about what's really important."

  "Don't get all philosophical on us, Ronnie," Nick said. "Keep looking for the source of the sound."

  They searched the chamber. It was difficult to see anything in the shifting light of the flashlights. Everything was light and shadow and darkness. There were statues everywhere, small and large. There were tables with funerary objects on them. Everything was dominated by Alexander's golden sarcophagus.

  It was getting stuffy in the tomb, sealed off from the outside, the way it had been for thousands of years. After some time, Nick called a halt.

  "This isn't getting us anywhere. I can't find anything."

  "It sounds a little louder by the sarcophagus," Selena said.

  "I noticed that, too," Ronnie said.

  "Do you think we can move it?" Nick asked. "I think the sound is coming from under it."

  "We can try," Ronnie said.

  They lined up on the side of the sarcophagus.

  "Push," Nick said.

  They grunted and pushed. Nothing happened.

  "This thing is solid gold," Selena said. "It must weigh a ton."

  "Try a corner," Nick said. "It will give us more leverage. Try to shift it."

  They heaved and grunted. The sarcophagus didn't move.

  "No dice," Lamont said.

  "The sound really does seem louder here," Selena said.

  "I wonder if we should open it up," Nick said.

  "You know what happened the last time we tried that," Ronnie said.

  The last time they'd opened an ancient coffin had been in Tibet, with unexpected and unpleasant results.

  Nick looked at the tall statue of Osiris standing guard behind the sarcophagus. He walked to it and put his hand on the staff.

  "That woman triggered the trap by pulling the staff," he said.

  "You think pulling on that will make something happen?" Selena said.

  "Only one way to find out."

  "What if it's another trap?"

  "I don't think there are any more of those. The whole point of the traps was to keep anyone from getting in here."

  He grasped the staff and pulled. It didn't move. He tried again. The staff came away and slammed down against the sarcophagus, leaving a dark scar.

  "You're gonna piss off the god, Nick," Lamont said.

  "Well, it was an idea anyway."

  "That doesn't look right," Selena said.

  "What doesn't?"

  "There." She pointed her light at the gash made by the staff. "That doesn't look like gold."

  Nick peered at the mark.

  "You're right."

  Nick took out his knife and dug the point into the side of the coffin.

  "This is lead. It's been gilded to look like gold."

  Ronnie used his knife to dig into one of the golden statues.

  "This is the same. Lead, not gold."

  "They're probably all like that," Ronnie said.

  "Whoever put this stuff in here probably stole the gold to build himself a pyramid or something," Lamont said.

  Ronnie ran his hand along the edge of the sarcophagus. Elaborate scenes from Alexander's life stood out in relief on the golden metal.

  "Look at this."

  They came over to stand next to him. Ronnie held his light on the side of the gilded coffin.

  "See that? That slot? What's it doing there?"

  There was a vertical slot about three inches long in the sarcophagus, placed in the middle of a battle scene depicting elephants and soldiers.

  "This was supposed to be filled with honey to preserve the body," Selena said. She moved her light. "Whatever that is, it can't go all the way through."

  "It must have a purpose," Nick said. "Look around the coffin. You see one like it anywhere else?"

  They circled the sarcophagus with their lights, looking for anything similar. There was only the one slot Ronnie had found.

  "I suppose it could be a flaw," Nick said.

  "I don't think so," Selena said. "It looks deliberate."

  "It looks like something is supposed to go in there," Lamont said. "A lever. Or a bar, something like that."

  "Not much would fit," Nick said. "It's too narrow."

  "How about a knife?" Lamont said.

  "Or a sword," Ronnie said.

  He reached up and took the sword from the top of the coffin. The great ruby in the hilt gleamed dark red in his light.

  "Like this one."

  "Go ahead, Ronnie. Try it," Nick said.

  Ronnie took the blade and placed the point in the slot.

  "It fits."

  He pushed the blade in part way.

  "Feels like it's up against something."

  "Push harder," Selena said.

  Ronnie pushed. The blade slid all the way in, up to the hilt. The golden sarcophagus began to turn with a harsh, grating sound. The sound of water got louder. A wisp of cool air drifted into the chamber.

  The sarcophagus stopped moving after a quarter turn, revealing a wide opening. Nick pointed his light. A broad flight of stone steps dropped away into darkness.

  "Damn," Lamont said.

  "Whoever built this wasn't kidding around," Nick said. "But why the elaborate set up? You ever see or hear about anything like this, Selena?"

  "Not like this, no. I mean, the ancient Egyptians are famous for traps and false corridors and hiding things in the tombs and pyramids. They went to great lengths to fool grave robbers."

  "Do you think that's what they were doing here?"

  "I have no idea," Selena said.

  "Only one way to find out."

  Nick started down the steps.

  42

  The steps were perfectly cut, a grand staircase hewed from the rock of the mountain. Nick counted eighty-eight steps before they reached the floor of a large cavern. The sound of running water was loud here. It came from a river flowing through the middle of the cavern.

  "I would never have guessed there was an underground river here," Selena said. "This is Berber country. You'd think they would have found it."

  "Not necessarily," Nick said. "Look where it is. We're under a mountain. There's no sign of water on the surface anywhere near here."

  "At least we're not going to run out of air," Ronnie said.

  They moved forward into the cavern. Lamont stumbled and looked down. He stood in a pile of bones.

  "Oh, man, I don't like this," he said.

  The bones of many skeletons lay on the cavern floor.

  "I wonder what happened to them?" Nick said.

  "Probably slaves," Selena said. "See those plates and cups mixed with the bones? They were eating when they died."

  "Poisoned?"

  "Probably. Someone didn't want anyone talking about this place."

  "Look at that!"

  They turned at Ronnie's exclamation. His light showed another gold sarcophagus, set on a square platform of smooth rock. A large painted statue of Anubis in wolf form loomed over it. The paint had deteriorated over the centuries, but the statue looked alive in the glare of their lights. Ready to leap forward and devour them. Ready to rip them apart.

  "Nice doggy," Lamont said.

  "Man. Look at those teeth," Ronnie said.

  Four more statues stood guard at each corner of the platform. Selena's voice was quiet, touched with awe.

  "Set, Osiris, Isis, and Nephthys," she said. "The core family of Egyptian gods. Everything we saw before was meant to fool anyone who got that far. This is where Alexander is buried, not up there."

  At the foot of the dais holding Alexander's remains was a second sarcophagus. It was made of wood and painted with the face of a woman. She had dark hair and a large nose.

  Selena went over to it and rested her hand on the surface.

  "So that's what she looked like."

  Her voice was quiet.

  "Who looked like?" Nick said.

  "Cleopatra. This has to be her. The Egyptians would paint a picture of the dead person on the surface of the coffin. Nobody's seen this for more than two thousand years."

  She took out her phone and took a picture.

  A skeleton lay next to Cleopatra's coffin, the arms neatly crossed over the hollow rib cage. A few pieces of rotted cloth clung to the bones. The skull grinned up at them.

  Sealed chests were placed at the feet of the god statues. Sealed jars, gold plates and cups were set on a table at one end of the platform. Ronnie climbed onto the dais and dug into the sarcophagus with the point of his knife.

  "This one's real," he said. "Gold, not lead."

  "What's in those chests?" Lamont said.

  "Probably gold," Selena said. "Jewels."

  Lamont went to one of the chests and pried it open with his knife. It was filled with gold coins. He picked one up. It had a woman's face stamped on it and looked as though it had been minted that morning. He put it in his pocket.

  "Lamont..." Nick said.

  "Come on, Nick. Alexander's not going to miss it. It makes a good souvenir."

  "A souvenir?"

  "Why not?" Ronnie said. "How about one for each of us?"

  Nick sighed. "Okay, one for each of us. But that's it."

  He looked up at the fearsome statue of Anubis.

  "Cleopatra did all this?"

  "She's the only one that could have done it," Selena said. "It's hard to imagine how powerful she was. I'll bet the skeleton next to her coffin is her companion, Artemisia."

  "The one who wrote the scroll?"

  Selena nodded. "Cleopatra would have told her what to do. Someone had to bring her here after she was dead."

  "Can't be her," Nick said.

  "Why not?"

  "If that's her, how did she manage to leave that scroll behind?"

  "This is all real interesting," Lamont said, "but do you think there's a way out of here?"

  "I don't know," Selena said. "There's no way out up those steps. It's here or not at all."

  "There has to be a way. What do you think, Ronnie?" Nick said. "Follow the river?"

  "You got a better idea?"

  "Which way?"

  Ronnie cast his light to the left. The roof of the cavern dipped down to the flowing water until it was a few inches above the surface.

  "That doesn't look good."

  Nick walked over to the water, reached down, and stuck his hand in.

  "Cold. The current is coming from the right."

  "We might have to get in the water at some point. We go left, we could get stuck."

  He didn't say they could drown.

  "Okay. We go right."

  "My batteries are getting weak," Selena said.

  "We have to conserve them," Nick said. "Everyone turn off except me. Ronnie, you take the rear, I'll lead."

  They set off behind Nick, following the river. The darkness closed in.

  43

  Ilya Baranov was in a bad mood. He had never failed to complete an assignment. If he returned to Russia without making sure Antipova was dead, he would not be welcomed. Baranov had no desire to spend the rest of his life in a gulag somewhere in northern Siberia.

  The bomb should have worked, but luck had kept Antipova alive. He remembered her well from training. They'd been in the same class at the training facility outside Moscow. She was the only one who could rival or surpass his own abilities.

  Now she was warned. That made her a dangerous, difficult target. He'd gone to the hospital to kill her but seen that she was guarded. If he'd tried to get to her there, things would have gotten messy. There was nothing to do but wait for her to be discharged.

  The day after the failed bomb attempt, Valentina came home in a wheelchair. She didn't emerge until the next day, when she left her sister's building in a car with the sister and the husband, Carter. Baranov followed them into Virginia, keeping far behind. They entered the grounds of the large country house they used as a headquarters.

  He'd gone back to Washington and waited. When they returned, Valentina wasn't with them.

  So, she was staying in Virginia. She'd been injured by the blast. That meant her movements would be restricted, making her more vulnerable. The house was isolated, private. There would be alarms, but they wouldn't present a serious problem.

  There was always a chance she'd be moved to some new location. He decided to go after her as soon as possible, but Baranov was a cautious man. He wanted more information before he made his move.

  Over the next two days he watched the Virginia house, planning his approach. Antipova had been in a wheelchair. She wouldn't be climbing any stairs, which meant her room would be on the ground floor. The house could have an elevator, but that seemed unlikely.

  Baranov watched for dogs, but didn't see any. Dogs made it hard to approach a target at night. Baranov hated dogs, and they hated him. They sensed something about him that almost always made them attack.

  He hadn't seen Antipova come out of the house. The two women who worked there had left at around six each night. Their cars were usually parked in the circular drive in front of the house when they were inside. Even if the cars were not visible, he decided to operate on the assumption they would be present. If they were there when he came for Antipova, he would deal with it. If they weren't, so much the better for them.

  For the last two days he hadn't seen the husband or the sister, or the other two men who worked with them. Baranov figured they must be off on an assignment, another plus for the operation.

  There would never be a better time. He decided to go after the target that evening.

  Baranov thought about weapons. Different situations required different solutions. In confined areas like the inside of a house, accuracy and distance were not prime considerations. A rifle wasn't a good choice. What was needed was volume of fire and ease-of-use. A shotgun was effective in close quarters, but unwieldy and limited in the number of rounds it could hold.

  He decided on a Skorpion pistol carbine. The Evo 3 was the latest in a long line of quality weapons produced by a Czech arms manufacturer. The weapon was short and compact, made mostly from black polymer plastic, easily concealed. It weighed in at a little over 6 pounds and fired over eleven hundred rounds a minute. It was ugly, efficient, and lethal.

  Baranov dressed in black. He packed his few personal possessions in a small bag, waited until it was dark, and went to his car. Someone would remove any signs he had ever been inside the SVR safe house where he'd been staying. Baranov didn't intend to return. He would leave the car at the airport.

  Once he was out of Washington and into Virginia, traffic was light. He drove past the house where Antipova was staying and parked a quarter of a mile away, off the side of the road. The car couldn't be seen from the highway.

  This was an upscale, semi-rural area with few houses, all on large properties with trees. It was a simple matter to keep out of sight, crossing two bordering properties and slipping through the trees until he reached the stone wall around the target.

  Baranov pulled on a black ski mask, took a set of goggles from his pocket and put them on. Like all night vision devices, they gathered ambient light and magnified it to allow the wearer to see in the dark. They also allowed him to see if there were laser beams meant to trigger an alarm.

  He climbed up onto the top of the wall. Sure enough, the lawn leading to the mansion was lit with a grid of green lines, laid out in a crisscrossing pattern like a checkerboard. He slipped over the wall, landing softly on his feet in one of the open squares. Holding the Skorpion ready, Baranov made his way to the side of the house, stepping carefully over the beams.

  The upper stories of the house were dark, but there were lights on in several rooms on the ground floor. Baranov scanned the side of the house for lasers, then took off the goggles. Regular light would blind him if he kept them on. He crept along the wall of the building to the back and found a window that was dark.

  He took out another device, a product of the SVR tech wizards who specialized in useful items for Moscow's spies. He used it to scan the window for an alarm. The device found a sensor and disabled it.

  Baranov tried the window. It was locked. He could see the lock on the side of the frame. He took out a circular cutter with a suction device and placed it against the glass. Thirty seconds later, he'd cut a piece out of the glass big enough to reach through. He unfastened the lock, slipped the window open, and climbed in.

  The room was used for storage, with pieces of furniture hidden under dust covers and boxes stacked against one wall. The soft rubber soles of his shoes made no sound as he moved across the wooden floor. Carefully, he cracked open the door to the room. A hall stretched away. He listened.

  There were voices somewhere toward the front of the house. Somewhere ahead. A television playing.

  He stepped out into the hall and moved toward the sound.

  44

  Valentina sat in a recliner in her room, watching a movie on a big screen TV. The hero had managed to enter a highly secured airbase in Russia, disguise himself as a Russian pilot, and steal the latest version of a first-line fighter aircraft. Of course it was impossible, but she enjoyed Hollywood's imaginative take on Russia and the spectacular flight scenes.