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time,” said Carter. “Now, as I was saying, the reason I feel hopeful about the mummy is that I think the tomb robbers were surprised in the middle of their sacrilege. There is something mysterious about the way these priceless objects are haphazardly thrown about. It appears as if someone spent a little time rearranging things after the thieves, but not enough to put everything back in its original state. Why?”
    Carnarvon shrugged.
    â€œLook at that beautiful cup on the threshold,” continued Carter. “Why wasn’t that replaced? And that gilded shrine with its door ajar. Obviously a statue was stolen, but why wasn’t the door even closed?” Carter stepped back to the door. “And this ordinary oil lamp. Why was it left within the tomb? I tell you, we’d better record the positioning of each object in this room very carefully. These clues are trying to tell us something. It is very strange indeed.”
    Sensing Carter’s tension, Carnarvon tried to look about the tomb through his friend’s trained eyes. Indeed, leaving an oil lamp within the tomb was surprising, and so was the disarray of the objects. But Carnarvon was so overwhelmed by the beauty of the pieces he could think of nothing else. Gazing at the translucent alabaster cup abandoned so casually on the threshold, he yearned to pick it up and hold it in his hands. It was so enticingly beautiful. Suddenly he noticed a subtle change in its orientation with regard to the garland of dried flowers and the oil lamp. He was about to say something when Carter’s excited voice rang out in the chamber.
    â€œThere’s another room. Everyone take a look.” Carter was squatting down, shining his flashlight beneath one of the funerary beds. Carnarvon, Lady Evelyn, and Callender hurried over to him. There, glittering in the circle of light from the torch, another chamber took form, filled with gold and jeweled treasure. As in the anteroom, the precious objects had been chaotically scattered, but for the moment the Egyptologists were too awed by their find to question what had happened three thousand years in the past.
    Later, when they would be ready to explore the mystery, Carnarvon was already fatally ill with blood poisoning. At 2 A.M. on April 5, 1923, less than twenty weeks after the opening of Tutankhamen’s tomb and during an unexplainable five-minute power failure throughout Cairo, Lord Carnarvon died. His illness reputedly was started by the bite of an insect, but questions were raised.
    Within months four other people associated with theopening of the tomb died under mysterious circumstances. One man disappeared from the deck of his own yacht lying at anchor in the placid Nile. Interest in the ancient robbery of the tomb waned and was replaced by a reassertion of the reputation of the ancient Egyptians in the occult sciences. The specter of the “Curse of the Pharaohs” rose from the shadows of the past. The New York Times was moved to write about the deaths: “It is a deep mystery, which it is all too easy to dismiss by skepticism.” A fear began to infiltrate the scientific community. There were just too many coincidences.

Day 1
CAIRO 3:00 P.M.
    Erica Baron’s reaction was pure reflex. The muscles of her back and thighs contracted and she straightened up, twirling to face the molester. She had bent over to examine an engraved brass bowl when an open hand had thrust between her legs, grabbing at her through her cotton slacks. Although she had been the object of a number of lewd stares, and even obviously sexual comments since she had left the Hilton Hotel, she had not expected to be touched. It was a shock. It would have been a shock anywhere, but in Cairo, on her first day, it seemed that much worse.
    Her attacker was about fifteen, with a jeering smile that exposed straight rows of yellow teeth. The offending hand was still extended.
    Ignoring her canvas tote bag, Erica used her left