The Vesuvius Isotope (The Katrina Stone Novels) (36 page)

I unrolled the map of the ruins handed to me by the veiled tout at the entrance. For a moment, I only stared at the paper, confused. The document in my hands was not a map at all. It was a long section of text written in Egyptian hieroglyphs. I stared at the symbols for a moment before they began to blur from the shaking of my hands.

The paper was thick. It appeared brittle to the eye. But to the touch, it was surprisingly supple. And when I folded a corner between two fingers and then unfolded it, only a barely perceptible crease was left behind.

I vaguely remembered Alyssa telling me at her museum that ancient papyrus was one of the most resilient types of paper ever invented. And that once an ancient scroll is unwound, methods finally exist today for softening it.

This was not a modern, commercial document made to look like ancient papyrus. This was ancient papyrus.

It was the original nardo document.

And Alyssa Iacovani was still alive.

I glanced around. Dante was examining another relief in the inner sanctuary, a grouping of birds. Their wingspans seemed to point toward the winged Isis and her companions. I casually re-rolled the nardo document and stepped outside.

She was standing on the outskirts of the temple, at a serene spot devoid of tourists. Beside her was a steep slope that led down to the Nile.

The tout in the black galabia and niqab was looking out over the water. When I approached, she turned toward me. This time, I noticed her green eyes through the mesh of the niqab’s second layer. She glanced at me only briefly, and then her eyes fell to the shoreline of the river.

“It’s here,” she said. I followed her gaze and saw the plant she was referring to. It was the lotus.

“This is how they kept secrets,” she said. “They hid half of the puzzle in a document somewhere, perhaps buried within a mummified crocodile. Or even in a library. The other half is encoded.

“In this case, the document actually
is
the first half of the puzzle. The text was written on the first plant you need. The papyrus.

“The encoded half is the nardo. Spikenard. It is the lotus.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked quietly.

“I didn’t know myself, until yesterday,” she said. “Yesterday, I broke the code.

“The lotus of Upper Egypt translates to ‘S N’ in ancient Egyptian—the very language that, among the educated classes of Egypt and Rome, only Cleopatra could speak and read. Lotus is S N. Spikenard. Nardo.

“When I learned that the lotus was the plant we sought, I knew that I would find the most authentic source of it here, in Upper Egypt, at the largest Temple of Isis in the world, the one completed by Cleopatra’s father.

“But even if I had known all of this before yesterday, I still couldn’t have told you, for the same reason Cleopatra could not tell her children. The danger to both of us has grown too great.

“Two days ago, a group of strange men came looking for me at the museum. I wasn’t there, but a colleague of mine had a horrible feeling about them. I told the colleague that if anyone returned he should tell them I had been killed. And that is why I am dead.” She flipped down the third layer of her niqab
.

“Katrina, be careful,” she said. “You have to stay hidden.”

“Because you think Rossi or his thugs might have followed you here?”

“No,” she said, “because the body of a prominent San Diego scientist was turned over to the police a few hours ago.”

For seven days, I had been expecting this moment. But now that it was upon me, I could hardly process the information.

Jeff’s body was turned over. Turned over. It is over.

But it wasn’t over.

“Wait,” I said.

Alyssa turned back toward me. I could no longer see her green eyes.

“Did they release his name?” My voice was weak and quivering.

“Not yet,” Alyssa said, “pending next-of-kin notification. I’m so sorry, Katrina.”

I pulled a small cassette tape from the pocket of my jeans. My hands were clammy and trembling as I handed it to her. “This is a voice recording of one of them on his cell phone. I recorded it yesterday. He did not know that I was sitting nearby. I was dressed as you are now.

“The conversation is in Italian. My hope is that it may have evidence that can put them away.” I handed the recording to Alyssa, and she slipped it beneath her galabia.

“The man on the tape…” I glanced around the ruins.

Dante was nowhere to be found.

I watched for a moment as Alyssa walked away. Then I looked back toward the water. The nardo swayed gently in the cool breeze.

I slipped cautiously down the treacherous slope toward the Nile and reached for the plant. My hands clasped its foliage and found the stalks and leaves to be strong. Gently, tenderly, I wiggled the nardo loose from its bed in the water.

There is a crash.

I feel wetness and pain.

I see a thousand memories.

I feel myself slipping beneath the surface…

The bite of a crocodile holds more force than that of any other creature on earth—even that of a great white shark. Yet, crocs almost always kill their prey by dragging them into the water and drowning them.

This trivia from a TV show from another lifetime flashes through my mind as something crashes into me, and then my head strikes the ground. The sunlight around me dims, and all I can see are teeth. I feel the earth shift beneath me. I feel a cool, somehow comforting wetness, and then darkness falls—as if the lamp has been put out in a closed room…

There is an image in my mind. It is an image of my husband, but he is not my husband. He is a handsome stranger, naked on a sunny beach. He looks up at me and smiles, and he tries to shield himself with a towel…

There is an image in my mind. It is an image of my husband, but it is not my husband. It is a twisted corpse lying naked on the deck of a yacht, a pool of red expanding rapidly around him. There are two gunshot wounds.

There is a gunshot…