The Third Gate by Lincoln Child Read Free Book Online Page B

the river; he vaguely remembered leafing through a copy as a child.
    “Page ninety-five,” Rush said.
    Logan flipped through the book, found the page, and—as the saloon throbbed around him—began to read.
The Nile … is a complicated stream. [It] proceeds through the desert on a broad and fairly regular course.… [But ultimately] the river turns west, the air grows more humid, the banks more green, and this is the first warning of the great obstacle of the Sudd that lies ahead. There is no more formidable swamp in the world than the Sudd. The Nile loses itself in a vast sea of papyrus ferns and rotting vegetation, and in that foetid heat there is a spawning tropical life that can hardly have altered very much since the beginning of the world; it is as primitive and hostile to man as the Sargasso Sea.… [The] region is neither land nor water. Year by year the current keeps bringing down more floating vegetation, and packs it into solid chunks perhaps twenty feet thick and strong enough for an elephant to walk on. But then this debris breaks away in islands and forms again in another place, and this is repeated in a thousand indistinguishable patterns and goes on forever.… Here there was not even a present, let alone a past; except on occasional islands of hard ground no men ever had lived or ever could live in this desolation of drifting reeds and ooze, even the most savage of men. The lower forms of life flourished here in mad abundance, but for … men the Sudd contained nothing but the threat of starvation, disease and death .
    Logan put the book down. “My God. Such a place really exists?”
    “It exists all right. You’ll see it before dark.” Rush shifted on the banquette. “Imagine: a region thousands of square miles across, not so much swamp as a labyrinth of papyrus reeds and waterlogged trunks. And mud. Mud everywhere, mud more treacherous than quicksand. The Sudd isn’t deep, often just thirty or fortyfeet in places, but in addition to being horribly honeycombed with braided undergrowth, its water is so full of silt, divers can’t see an inch beyond their faces. The water’s full of crocodiles by day, the air full of mosquitoes by night. All the early explorers gave up trying to cross it and eventually went around. The Sudd may not be quite as remote or impassable today as it was in the times Moorehead wrote of, but it’s no picnic. It’s in a wide, shallow valley. And every year it spreads. Just a little, but it spreads. It’s like a living thing—that’s why we need such a narrow craft. Trying to traverse the Sudd is like threading a needle through the bark of a tree. Every day we have a recon helicopter that charts the shifting eddies, maps new paths through it. And every day, those routes change.”
    “So the vessel acts sort of like an icebreaker,” Logan said. He was thinking of the strange equipment he’d seen at the bow.
    Rush nodded. “The shallow draft helps clear underwater obstructions, and the propeller at the stern provides the raw power necessary to push through tight spots.”
    “You’re right,” Logan said. “It does sound like hell on earth. But why are we …” He stopped. “Oh, no.”
    Rush nodded. “Oh, yes.”
    “Good lord.” Logan fell silent a moment. “So Narmer’s tomb is there. But why?”
    “Remember what Stone said? Think about it. Narmer went to unprecedented lengths to conceal the location of his tomb. He actually went out of Egypt proper, past the six cataracts of the Nile, into Nubia—a dangerous journey into hostile lands. Given how early in Egyptian history this was—remember, this is the Archaic Period, the First Dynasty—it’s an accomplishment on the order of the Great Pyramid. Not only that, but Narmer is the only pharaoh not buried in Egypt—as you probably know, all pharaohs had to be entombed on Egyptian soil.”
    Logan nodded. “That’s why Egypt never colonized.”
    “Given all this, Jeremy—all this incredible effort and