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"For the same reason there is more than one branch to your government. It's a check against misuse. They can concentrate on protecting the bones while avoiding the politics that invariably creep into any organization."
I don't have an immediate response. I'm in the strange position of having too many questions to ask them in a logical fas.h.i.+on. But then the one question I should have asked first, the one I've harbored for years, suddenly rises to the surface.
"What was at KV65? What did my brother die for?"
"Like the Raphael," Manheim says, "the tomb held unauthorized information about the brokers. A good deal more detailed than the symbol on the sculpture." He gives me a sympathetic look. "I wish I could say your brother died for the bones, Jack."
While it's not the answer I wanted, there is some closure. Yet there's something else I need to know.
"Did you order it?"
Manheim shakes his head. "Actually, Victor was tasked with handling the matter. I would have been more subtle."
I feel the anger returning now.
"Why a conspiracy at all? If the bones can do what you say they can, why not use them?"
"Gordon Reese," is Manheim's grim response. "And men like him. Reese has been after the bones for a very long time. He has finally succeeded in tracking them to me, which is why they've been moved. Should he ever succeed in acquiring them, we both know what would happen. What if they had wound up in the hands of someone like Caligula, or Genghis Khan, or any one of a thousand other powerful despots? The reason that no individual tyrant can take the world to a place from which it could never recover is because people die. It's something of a safety mechanism, I suppose."
"So why keep them around at all? If they're that dangerous, why weren't they destroyed centuries ago?"
Manheim releases a heavy sigh and it makes him look even older. He steps around the chair, his hand trailing along the back, the arm, and he sinks into it.
"One should tread carefully when considering what to do with something G.o.d has vested with great power. It's been the dilemma of every incarnation of your brokers, ever since the original Hebrew priests took them from the men who removed them from the burial site. Do you know, Jack, that the priests killed those men? Not only that, they killed the man who had been raised from the dead. They were so fearful of what these bones meant that they murdered a person who was touched by the hand of G.o.d."
"And they still kill for them." It is not a question.
"When necessary." Manheim pauses, then gives me a wink. "I trust that Gregory Hardy is no longer a problem?"
"That one was handled by them, and I suspect Reese will be next."
I'm enthralled, like a schoolboy who has been shown something fantastic in a science lab. Every word of it might be a lie, but there's something eminently believable about the tale. I find myself drawn to this man, to the knowledge he possesses. I want to know what he knows. It's a need that has defined my life.
Esperanza has taken a seat in one of the chairs by the fireplace. Before joining her, I pour myself a drink from the bar. In the s.p.a.ce of a few minutes, the confrontational nature of this audience has been replaced by a meeting of kindred minds.
"And what about Victor?" I ask.
"Victor will not see the bones pa.s.s into his possession."
"Why?" Espy asks.
"For the same reason that Mr. Reese cannot have them. Neither of them would be suited to the task."
I'm about to press the matter when a concussive sound all but deafens me. It seems to happen in slow motion, the red stain that appears on Manheim's white s.h.i.+rt. It spreads in a flower pattern, a deadly orchid. Both Esperanza and I are out of our seats before the ringing stops.
And there, standing in the doorway, is Victor, his gun now aiming at me. "Please sit down, Dr. Hawthorne." His voice is almost pleasant, as if shooting one's father is something of no great consequence.
There's a pain in my skull that I can only a.s.sociate with hatred, and with having something hard-won s.n.a.t.c.hed away. I watch the life bleed away from my link to the ancient secrets.
"Why?" I practically spit.
"Because he would give them away rather than entrust them to me. Now take a seat."
It's a good suggestion because my legs feel weak. Esperanza has already complied and sat down. I reach a hand back for the chair while slipping my other hand into my coat pocket, where I feel cold metal. Victor is less than five feet away, so when I fire the gun through the coat fabric, the bullet strikes true. He's propelled backward, his free hand clutching his shoulder. But when he lands, he's still holding the gun.
I'm across the room in a second, jumping on top of him, pressing my own piece behind his ear. It's all I can do to keep from blowing his head off. This is the culmination of everything I've experienced since leaving Evanston; this man is the embodiment of my own personal devil. The pain in my temple is stronger now, a pulsing sensation that fires the nerve endings behind my eyes.
"Jack." Esperanza's voice is soft but insistent.
I shut my eyes against the pain and concentrate on breathing. I force the anger to a place further back, where it can simmer instead of boil. And still I want to kill this man. Instead, I push myself up and then bring the b.u.t.t of the gun down on his head. Breathing heavily, I turn and find Espy staring at me.
She puts a hand on my shoulder. "Are you all right?"
I nod, then point at Victor. "Can you do something with him?"
The front of George's s.h.i.+rt is covered red, a trickle of blood still flowing from the wound. When I reach the chair, I see that the old man's hand is moving. I bend down toward him and he grabs my forearm. It startles me so that I almost pull away. His lips are moving as tiny bubbles of frothy blood pool in the corners. I bring my ear close to his mouth.
". . . keep them from Reese." The next bit is incomprehensible. His eyes are closed, and I can see him fading, yet his hand on my arm remains strong. "They're still here."
"What?"
"The bones are here. . . ."
CHAPTER 24
I've always wanted a wine cellar. Not the brightly lit, modern, temperature-controlled variety favored by the upper middle cla.s.s, the kind that exists solely so they can hold dinner parties and tell their guests they have to pop down to the wine cellar to select a nice Beaujolais. No, I fancy having a wine cellar like this one: the dark, dank, moldy kind lifted directly from a Poe story, with casks labeled by region, year, and vintner, and bottles of all kinds arranged in rows and columns crafted from wood dating back to the time of Columbus. To say that I am surrounded by a fortune in processed grapes would be a gross understatement. And such is my preoccupation that the wine goes mostly unnoticed.
My hand trembles as I run a finger along a cedar shelving unit well into the cellar against the south wall. The chamber was cut from the bedrock with such skill and care that the shelf structure abuts the wall with seamless precision. I push a thick layer of dust aside with my finger, and it falls from the wood like gray snow. I don't feel anything, but I'm certain this is the place. Manheim said it twice, and I absorbed his words. If I live to be a hundred, I'll still be able to repeat each and every syllable the dying man uttered. I take slow steps across the stone floor, letting my finger glide along the wood. I'm about to stop, retrace my steps, and try again, when I feel a hole in the frame.
I smile at Esperanza, who accompanies me with eagerness equal to my own. I reach into my pocket and pull out a ring, the one Manheim instructed me to remove from his finger. I hold it up to the light and it glints in the yellowish glow: the Manheim crest emblazoned in opal. I fumble for a moment until I can slip the ring's gem into the hole, which accepts it as if it had been machined to the proper size.
I'm not sure what I was expecting, but it was more than the nothing that follows.
"So you're going to be difficult," I mutter, releasing the ring, allowing it to remain seated in the hole.
"What's wrong?" Espy asks.
Hands on hips, I look around the room, searching for anything that might make this easier. "Nothing. Nothing's the matter."
Except that the room is clean. There's not even a piece of wood lying around that I can jam into the seam-provided I can locate the seam. I move to the right and start to run my hand over the bedrock. Although likely hidden, there remains a seam somewhere along this length of wall, probably within eight inches of the shelving. That would have been common to any work done during the time period in which the cellar was built. The problem is that master craftsmen were hired for this job, and they hid the seam well. I close my eyes, relying on the sensitivity of my fingertips. I feel every stone, every rising and sinking of the surface, though nothing with the constancy of a seam. I open my eyes and step back.
"Come here," I say over my shoulder. I scan the hundred or so bottles set into their nooks and select the dozen that, according to my limited knowledge, are the rarest, the most expensive. I pull these from the shelves and begin handing them to Espy.
"What are you doing?" she asks as she accepts two bottles.
"We're not animals, are we?"
"I suppose not."
There is still an element of time that dictates our actions, even if I buy in to George's insistence that we're alone here. Who knows what the younger Manheim has orchestrated. It's this uncertainty that makes me willing to sacrifice. Once the dozen bottles are safe, I go to the left of the shelving unit, wrap my fingers around the column board, and pull. At first, nothing happens. I tug hard and can detect no give, nothing to indicate any movement. I let go, rub my hands together, take hold of the wood again, and pull.
Pa.s.sages like this one, even though constructed with weighty materials such as stone, would have been designed so a single person could manipulate them-the magic of hinges and rollers. I'm not sure, then, what's making this so difficult, especially considering that Manheim could not have left the bones un.o.bserved for decades. I wonder if there's another entrance that he didn't have time to make known to me. Sweat is beading on my forehead, and I'm about to release, when I hear a cracking noise and watch as a thousand-pound slab of rock detaches from the wall and swings open. At least half of the remaining wine bottles are upset by the motion and tumble from their perches in a deafening cacophony. But the commingling of expensive wine into a pool does not mar my excitement as the dim electric lighting reveals the first few feet of a roughhewn pa.s.sage, one that disappears into darkness.
This moment is the personal crucible for any archaeologist worth his or her salt. It's the point at which the thrill of discovery-the desire to jump in-is tempered by the sobering knowledge that one false move could destroy months of work. While this is an unusual case-a well-preserved pa.s.sage, new in archaeological terms, and cared for by acolytes-there is still the unknown that's encountered at any dig, where you can never know what lies down a corridor, what sort of condition any artifacts might be in, or if one ill-conceived step could upset some weight-bearing balance and bring a ton of solid rock down on what you've come to discover.
And for the first time in my professional life, I find that I don't care.
I turn on a flashlight we borrowed from the electrical room on the first floor-after securing Victor, who is still unconscious. I s.h.i.+ne the beam of light into the pa.s.sage. It curves slightly for about twenty feet and slopes downward until I can see nothing but rock and dust, then darkness.
"Ready?"
Espy nods and we step in. It's an entirely different atmosphere than when we entered Quetzl-Quezo. There's a heightened energy, a sense of expectation, and a healthy dose of respect for the unknown. If I were back in South America, or even Egypt, and this was a standard tomb, thousands of years old and filled with debris and rubble, I would feel less concerned about our safety than I do right now. Despite what one sees in movies, ancient tombs were not places in which ingenious priests devised complex defense mechanisms to deal with intruders. Those that do hold wards-beyond the standard curse carved above the main entryway or outside the burial chamber-seldom include anything beyond concealed pits or garroting wires. What concerns me here is that this is not an ancient tomb, but a relatively modern one, built in a time when people harbored fantasies about the ancients of the pyramid age. It's possible the builders might have included traps based on popular fiction-amateurs attempting something that the masters would not have tried.
We proceed slowly, taking short steps, allowing the flashlight to illuminate every inch of a corridor that looks to have been carved from the rock by heavy machinery. I lead the way, following the curve and the downward slope, and stopping when I see that the pa.s.sage transitions to a brick-lined hallway less than a dozen feet ahead. I aim the light along the border, looking for potential threats, traps, anything hinting of danger. It looks clean so I move forward, trailing my hand along the old brick. Up ahead, the light disperses, indicating the hall opening up to something larger.
When Espy and I reach the end of the hall, we look out over a chamber of shapes and shadows. It's too large for me to get a true feel for it; the flashlight reveals a box here, a display case there, a wall hanging opposite us, but too far away to identify. The beam of light refuses to remain on anything and I realize that I'm shaking. My arm is shaking with the rush of discovery, the defining moment when the heart quickens, when the chest knots in some strangled emotion that's impossible to identify, except to know that it's good.
"We need more light," Espy says, stepping down into the chamber.
"Stop." I croak the word, transfixed somewhere between elation and fright. If there are any traps built into this place, there's a good chance they would manifest themselves here. I s.h.i.+ne the light in her direction and find that she's taken a single step down to the chamber floor, which I see is cement, but she has gone no farther. I play the beam in small circles away from her position. More of the same. I step down and take her elbow in my hand.
"Don't go anywhere or touch anything unless I say so, got it?" I don't expect an answer, and she doesn't provide one other than to disengage her arm from my grasp.
I turn around and start to search along the entry wall, because Espy has a point about us needing more light. And there should be a source of artificial light for this room. I see that the wall itself is brick, giving the place a bunker feel rather than a tomb. Since there's nothing to the right of the entrance, I go to checking the left side. It's there, almost within arm's reach, and it seems an incongruous thing when I'm thinking of this event as another Tutankhamen discovery. Somehow a light switch doesn't fit. With a chuckle I step over and flood the chamber with light.
Almost before the deed is done, I see the small hole below the switch, just the right size to accept the ring's gem, but I can't stop the switch from completing its arc. There's a rumbling beneath our feet, like a subway car racing under a pedestrian walkway. I hear the grind of old gears and register movement at the entrance. I grab Esperanza and pull her down, stretching myself to cover her as a mixture of dust and stone and pieces of brick rains down on us. When it's over, Espy and I are coughing from the debris that wants to nest in our lungs. Finally the dust clears enough to see again, and all I can do is purse my lips and silently curse my own idiocy. Our exit is gone, blocked by a ma.s.sive stone plug. What irritates me is that this is one of the traps the Egyptians used.
Esperanza, after taking in what has just happened, fixes me with a withering look.
"At least we have light," I try. And we do. Half a dozen three-bulb fixtures hang from the ceiling, bringing the room to life, and the repository of secret knowledge they reveal forces our dilemma from my mind.
The room is all bricks and concrete, a few spa.r.s.e wall hangings, a long bookshelf lining one of the walls, and four display cases staggered in the center. Maybe it's because my experience is in crumbling structures, layers of sediment, and treasures teased from hiding, but I find it all a bit odd.
I stand and help Esperanza to her feet. I begin searching again, propelled toward the nearest display-a hardwood box unit, shallow, with a two-paneled gla.s.s top secured with a lever lock. Inside is a tattered scroll, unrolled and tacked on to chemically neutral hard plastic. The writing is faded, virtually gone in some places, but I can read enough to understand that it's a portion of an early copy of the Bible story that Reese quoted to me. There's no way to tell for certain its age, but if I had to guess I'd date it back to the fourth century b.c. I run my hand along the case, wis.h.i.+ng I could touch the fragile parchment. It takes a moment before I realize that Esperanza is not with me. I spot her over by the bookshelf, paging through one of its wares.
I step over to the next display and what I find makes little sense to me. It's a collection of symbols on different mediums: cloth, wood, metal, clay. From what I can see, they bear no resemblance to the family crests at Quetzl-Quezo. If I were conducting a typical dig, this is something I would photograph, catalog, and later spend several happy months investigating. Today, however, I can only sigh before moving on.
"Jack, you've got to see this."
What she places in front of me is not a book but a series of hand-bound pages. I take it from her and flip through the pages, noting there are perhaps eight photos, individuals of historical importance, and a few pages of text for each one. The text is written in German.
"Since I don't speak German, you'll have to tell me what I'm looking at." I stop at a picture of Albert Einstein, the most recognizable of the subjects.
"Wait a minute . . ." Espy reaches across and points a finger at what's printed below Einstein's photo: 18791936 18791936.
"Dates of birth and death," I say. "So?"
"Einstein died in 1955."
I feel a numbness run up my legs as I realize I don't need to be able to read German to understand what the pages say.
"How did he die the first time?"
Espy scans the page. "Car accident."
Two deaths, only one of them official. For all of his caution about using them, it seems those of Manheim's ilk have not been above drawing on the power of the items in their charge. I shake my head. Stalin's picture was also among the pages.
With new eyes, I look out over the treasure trove of antiquities; of things I could spend the rest of my life researching. And none of it matters. Only one thing is important, and I won't find it in this room.
I walk away from Espy, past the display case with the odd symbols, and around a trio of crates that look as if they hold the contents of an empty display. At least the elder Manheim was honest about one thing: this circus is soon to travel. I suppose I'm the caretaker now-at least until the brokers come to collect.
I saw the door when the lights came on, but like a person who enjoys the antic.i.p.ation of Christmas more than the day itself, I ignored it. I wanted to soak in the atmosphere, prepare myself before facing this portal. That silliness is gone now, stripped away by a feeling of disgust that I'm not even certain I could name a cause for. All of a sudden, I just want this to end.
I stop a few feet away and study it. It's a nondescript metal door with a simple handle. There is not even a visible lock. I suppose that Manheim's forefathers, the ones who would have accepted the bones into their care, a.s.sumed that if someone made it this far, they belonged here.
I don't belong here. But I open the door anyway.
CHAPTER 25
I stand in the threshold and let my eyes take in everything before I allow my other senses to muddle the experience. Esperanza has joined me but I register her presence in some peripheral way, as if she were a phantom. There is something about the smallness of the room, the lack of anything ornate, that I find appropriate. After all I've gone through to find them, it seems fitting they should be as stripped of accoutrements as I am. stand in the threshold and let my eyes take in everything before I allow my other senses to muddle the experience. Esperanza has joined me but I register her presence in some peripheral way, as if she were a phantom. There is something about the smallness of the room, the lack of anything ornate, that I find appropriate. After all I've gone through to find them, it seems fitting they should be as stripped of accoutrements as I am.
The room is less than ten feet square, and the ossuary is the only thing in it. I suppose I thought the bones would be housed in some grand display, a lavish container for items of divine power. Instead, the ossuary is plain, and I'd date the period as first century a.d. In fact, with the exception of the lack of carvings on the exterior, it looks like the Ossuary of Caiaphas unearthed in Jerusalem in the early 1990s.
I walk in and place my hand on the box. It's cold. I begin to feel along the lid, searching for a handhold, and when I find my grip I push the old stone with all my strength. In a rush, Espy is there, adding her strength to mine until the lid moves, sc.r.a.ping stone on stone until we've produced a gap sufficient to peer inside. Esperanza backs away a half step, as if she is granting me dibs to the experience.
They are gathered and wrapped in purple cloth. I reach in and lift away a corner until I see them, yellow and white and brown. I release the cloth and, after a pause as my hand hangs in the air above, I touch them with the tips of my fingers. And while there's no static, no transfer of divine power from them to me, I am still satisfied. I wish I had a cigar with which to mark the moment, but the last Cuban went to ash in Lalibela.
Replacing the cloth, I pull the bones out of their nest. I turn to Esperanza. "Do you have any tape left?" She shakes her head, so I secure the bones as well as I can in their own fabric.
Espy stands back, allowing me to savor the moment awhile longer before bringing me back to the matter at hand.
"How are we going to get out of here?"
Instead of answering, I set our precious cargo to the side, crouch down, and place my shoulder against the ossuary.
"Care to give me a hand?"