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centuries-old religion that there was another, greater queen buried below.
    Conrad kicked the bones away with his boots to find a solid granite slab.
    The slab had no identifiable seal or engravings that he could see, but it looked like it could well be hiding a vertical shaft or stairway to another passageway below. The only problem was that it looked like it weighed a couple of tons. He’d never be able to pry it open by himself, and if this was indeed one of Hank’s multidimensional portals, he didn’t have the tech to turn on the so-called resonators.
    He’d have to open it the old-fashioned way.
    Conrad reached into his pack and pulled out a roll of primasheet explosive. He got down on his hands and knees and began to apply it to the granite, molding it into shape. Properly done, the blast would be directed in one direction—down to the passageway on the other side of the slab. Of course, if there were no passage below and only bedrock, the blast would blow up into this burial chamber and probably bury him alive.
    He laid a special cardboard backing on top of the primasheet to direct the blast, stabbed a remote fuse into it and stepped behind one of the eight massive pillars. He pulled out his phone, which he used as a remote detonator, and on the virtual keypad pressed the number six button once, twice, and then paused.
    Conrad Yeats, what the hell are you doing?
    This was a World Heritage Archaeological Site. What he was about to do was technically and morally criminal. It would only solidify his reputation as a post-modern archaeologist whose quest for knowledge about a site was more important than the integrity of the site itself, and that once obtained the relics and ruins were basically rocks to be discarded. Serena Serghetti would have a field day with this, accusing him of being a modern-day Ferlini.
    On the other hand, Ferlini and others before him had already had their way with these pyramids, leaving nothing more to be found as far as the world was concerned. For all he knew, Serena was already aware of what could be down here and had persuaded her fellow preservationists at UNESCO to list this as a World Heritage site to hide what he was about to unearth. After all, these pyramid fields had certainly yielded no tourism dollars to speak of.
    He could almost hear the Queen of Sheba herself whispering from the Great Beyond into his ear with a faint hiss:
Great adventurers have been doing this for centuries, Conrad. Nobody will hear the blast. It’s just you and me here. You’ll never be caught, only credited with the find of the ages. The hidden knowledge of King Solomon, lo, the secrets of the gods, can be yours for the taking. Your virgin wants to see what you find more than anybody else. She wants you to do it. You have to do it, for her....
    Unable to resist, Conrad pressed the number six key one more time.
    Boom!
    The explosion ripped through the quaking burial chamber, spewing shards of granite like a cluster bomb and taking out chunks of the eight massive pillars. For a few seconds Conrad thought the barrel-vaulted ceiling would come crashing down on him. But the pillars held, shielding him from the worst of the blast.
    Coughing from the debris, Conrad put on his night-vision goggles and covered his mouth, cursing himself for not doing so before he pressed the detonator button. Slowly he made his way around a battered pillar to the center of the nave and saw the gaping hole.
    He peered through the dust into the vertical shaft and beheld stone steps descending deep into the netherworld.
    It’s here. It’s real.
    At the bottom of the long flight of steps was a passageway. Conrad stepped through the veil of debris, removed his goggles and switched on his headlight. The air was cool and damp, not stale as he expected.
    As he started down the passageway, he aimed his light at a life-size relief on the wall. The vivid, striking mural depicted the comforting scene of a long line of bound prisoners