The Labyrinth Key

by Christopher Cartwright

  The senator rubbed his neck, laughing. “No, no cameras in here… Well.” He laughed. “We did have one but the cleaning people busted the wiring last week… It’s still being repaired.”

  “Ah.” Josh put his glass down and pushed up his sleeves. “That’s good.”

  His punch caught the senator forcefully and without warning, in the nose. He was supposed to hit the man on the cheek but he’d turned his head like a girl and now, Josh had made a mess. God damn it!

  The senator staggered back, clutching his face. Real fear sparked in his eyes. “What the hell—”

  Josh shook his fist out, taking notice of the blood on his skin. He looked for a place to wipe it off but saw nothing within convenient reach.

  The senator glared as he staggered forward, stumbling a step or two before a fortuitous grab at his desk allowed him to remain upright rather than prone pondering his reflection in the shine of his attacker’s wingtips.

  Lightning fast, Josh snatched the letter opener off the desk and grabbed the Senator’s wrist. He trapped the man’s palm on the desk and positioned the letter opener above the senator’s hand and paused, the tip mere millimeters away.

  The senator whimpered in abject terror. Josh could see his own tiny image in the man’s glasses; make that two tiny images. Studying his mini-me’s, he read nothing at all in his own eyes.

  “I’ll do it,” he promised as the senator gaped with fear. “You know I will.”

  “But I—”

  Josh smiled pleasantly. “What can I say. They want what they want. And you know what?” He pressed the tip of the shiny steel blade into the senator’s flesh, causing a slight indentation. “You’re going to give it to them.”

  The man broke. Josh had seen many people break. He knew the signs. “But… my campaign was built on…the fact that I-”

  Josh laughed. “Ah, yes. Your campaign.” Josh lifted the letter opener, running it in a meandering fashion along the senator’s prominent veins. Age spots were just starting to show. The senator was getting fat and complacent in his prime. “You worked hard to build that campaign; I know. The people trust you. You want their trust. You worked hard to build your reputation on it.” Their eyes met. “You know how fast I can unbuild that trust, that reputation?” He smiled in the man’s face as the senator’s glasses winked in the light. “Please don’t misunderstand. I’m in no way threatening to end your career, okay? I’m promising, senator. And I always keep my promises.”

  The senator’s lips opened. They weren’t chapped. He took care of himself. But his mouth was dry. He touched his hand to his nose as the blood trickled- just a touch. His throat worked; his eyes hardened-

  The door opened.

  Josh palmed the letter opener like a switchblade. The senator jumped. His young aide peered in after his perfunctory knock, carrying a stack of papers. “Sir,” he said, double checking his schedule, and Josh thought, no wonder the senator was getting soft. If your help didn’t do their prep before they opened the door, you deserved just what kind of help they could give you. “Your meeting with SOMEONE important…”

  He glanced up at the silence and saw the senator by the desk. Josh slowly released the letter opener, nudging it unnoticeably back to its place. The aide stared, not one blond hair on her head out of place. “Sir! Are you okay? Shall I call security?”

  Josh and the senator locked eyes. Though the two men had both graduated from Ivy League schools, you didn’t need to be smart to read the warning in the depths of Josh’s.

  The senator turned and smiled. “No, it’s just nerves.” He spread his hands disarmingly, at a loss for his own human failings. He touched the blood that trickled from his nose reassuringly. “I get nosebleeds when I get nervous. Always have.” He laughed and glanced to where the cameras were supposed to be. Where no cameras were. He flicked lint off his pants. “It’s hell on my dry cleaning. Should have picked a different profession. Not so many speeches.”

  The aide smiled, reassured. He offered the senator a tissue. “Well, we’re ready for you when you are, sir.” He took his bloody tissue back despite his protest and Josh frowned. “I’ll tell them you’re finishing up a call, sir.”

  Josh realized his hand was also bloody and tucked it under the clean one as the senator said, “I’ll be right there. Let me just… clean up a bit.”

  The door closed behind the aide.

  The two men sat in silence until Josh stood up by the desk and began to dust his hands on his pants. Then he thought better of it and held them in front of him. He smiled, poured some of the whisky onto his shirt tail, and mopped off the blood. “I’m glad we had this meeting, senator.” He drank straight from the crystal decanter and swore it tasted better than if it had been from a plain glass. “I’m also happy to report you and I will never meet again. In fact, you’ll never meet me or any of the boys again.” The senator’s shoulders relaxed imperceptibly, but his eyes narrowed, waiting for the other shoe to drop. Josh put the decanter back on the table. “Next time, it will be your family who suffer for his mistakes. You still enjoy that place on Abbey Court?” He shook his head regretfully but never dropped his eyes. “I hear the neighborhood is really going downhill.”

  The man blanched. “I understand.” His lips tightened. “Sir.”

  Josh grinned and tucked the damp tail of his shirt back into his pants leisurely. “Have a good morning.”

  As Josh strolled out of the room, his phone vibrated in his pocket. Good timing. He smiled winningly at Jonas at her desk as he pulled out the phone to answer it.

  “Hey, sis. Isn’t it early in Paris?”

  He noticed his hand was still bloody. He switched the phone to his other ear so the senator’s aide couldn’t see and continued down the hall amid the bustle of a D.C. morning.

  He grinned. “Well. I guess that’s worth staying up to celebrate.” He jumped out of the way of a harried temp hurrying along and grinned. “Nice work. The boss will be very pleased with you.”

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  US Military Base – Palmyra, Syria

  The heat rose off the dry, dusty land, unstoppable, unavoidable. Sam wiped his brow. He’d spent the better part of ten hours in a dusty, tiny truck, hurtling over broken roads through the desert since dawn. Now the sun was high in the sky and Sam sighed, having never thought he’d be here again.

  Ten young men and women cleaned up the area outside the ruins while they waited for the supply truck to come. Now, as Sam dismounted from the jeep, grateful for the chance to stretch his legs, he took a look at his welcoming committee. He’d attracted notice – he expected to, a civilian in this place – but they took it in stride. One in particular caught his attention – a striking man in his mid-twenties who wore his combat gear like designer clothes. There’s something about the eyes, Sam thought, which seemed to convey a certain arrogance coupled with an intelligence beyond their years. A look that was hard to forget.

  The man had spotted him too and was waiting to see what he’d do.

  Shrugging off his uneasiness, Sam started unloading his truck. He had packed light due to short notice, amazed to note how much the desert had worn down his strength. When he heaved his bag to his shoulder and glanced again to the tent entrance, the startling man had gone.

  Wordlessly, a couple of soldiers helped him and motioned at Sam to follow.

  As he trudged through the base, Sam couldn’t help but notice a certain air of boredom- almost a sense of longing for something, anything, to happen. Everyone’s seen pictures of marine super-bases in the desert, he thought, but no one talked about the tent-based camps that made up the majority of US bases. Here were the absolute basics. As he passed through, he saw dusty books, well-worn, tossed on bedrolls with newspaper under them, spread out like a map. Sam had forgotten about that himself. You could hear scorpions coming on newspaper- their little claws scuttled very particularly. He still remembered the sound. And the newspapers made good reading if you managed to get a recent issue. Out here,
you’d take whatever entertainment you could get.

  Lost in thought, Sam almost bumped into the marine in front of him before realizing that they had stopped. He hefted his bag higher and peered into what had brought them to a halt; it appeared to be a small tent, big enough for two people, no more. All but one marine had left.

  “Thank you, soldier.”

  “Pleasure, sir.” He gestured to the dusty bedroll, the plastic stool that served as both table and chair. His face hid well-concealed skepticism that a man like Sam could get used to a life like this.

  Sam set down his bag. “I was told that I could speak to—”

  The marine looked like he never smiled, but Sam thought it was just a front. This kind of life made people alternately suspicious or amazingly open. Always a tossup. “Just get yourself situated, we’ll send him over.”

  “Thank you.” Once the marine had retreated Sam shifted the entrance curtains wider and stepped inside. To his surprise, there was a box fan linked into a mess of extension cords running to some main power unit. Sam loosened his collar in the breeze, grateful. Amazing what a little cool air could do. The tent almost felt secure.

  Sam dumped his bag on the ground, making sure his cell and wallet were secure on his person. He wiped his dirty hands on his pants, then his hands over his sweaty face, feeling grit. Was there a bathroom he could use to wash up before meeting Ethan? It had been fifteen years and they’d parted ways under ambiguous circumstances. Now, after so much time, the least he could do was look presentable.

  But where was the bathroom? Walking outside, Sam decided to just walk back the way he’d come. Hopefully he would find a bathroom. Or even better- a water pump.

  He found some soldiers carrying heavy plastic water jugs that had seen better days on their shoulders, shirtless in the sun, laughing. Sam envied them their cleanliness but kept his mouth shut. He followed the way they’d come, aware in passing of the general day-to-day familiarity of soldiers all about, bored and awaiting orders. He felt a pang deep in his chest. For all the horror and toughness, the marines had given him a brotherhood of camaraderie he’d never found anywhere else. The crew of the Tahila were close, but it wasn’t quite the same.

  He finally found the pump on his own and crouched to rinse his hands and face, insanely grateful for the feeling of clean water sluicing away all the grime from his long journey. The water was hot enough to make him wince, heated to shower temperatures just by the sun. He rinsed his mouth quickly and spat it out in the dirt.

  Damp with the oppressive humidity, thick as a blanket, he rolled his sleeves up past his elbows and found his way back to his tent with minimal wrong turns.

  He checked his watch. He was early, too. That would give him time to collect his thoughts in preparation for seeing the man who had saved his life all those years ago. Saved his life, and…

  Sam cut that thought off and pulled aside his tent flap.

  He reached for his bag to pull out his notebook and gripped the bag in surprise. The man he had seen earlier was just sitting on his bed.

  Sam released the bag and tried to look like he wasn’t totally caught off guard. He straightened slowly, feeling water and sweat trickle down his neck. “Ethan.”

  Ethan nodded, but said nothing. He hasn’t changed, Sam thought. He still had the wary arrogance that had played a big role when he’d saved Sam’s life, but now older, he could see his bearing had been greatly enhanced by the military; hard to miss the muscles and tight buzz cut, all framed and showcased by the standard military-issued tank, fatigues and boots.

  “Been a while. How have you been?”

  “I’ve been all right.” Sam watched the little boy who’d suffered his drunken father peer out from those hard eyes. A little kid longing for approval and acceptance. “How about you?” He smiled. “Good to see you.”

  And it was. Hard to fake that actually. Despite the man’s arrogance, Sam liked him now just as he’d liked him then.

  Ethan must have heard the ring of truth beneath his words. He shrugged but softened a bit. “All right. Didn’t think you’d actually come. Long way to go just to look at a stupid wall.” The suspicion lurked again. “Must be important.”

  Sam dumped his bag to the ground. “I think so. Well. I hope so. Get me off the hook.”

  “You and me both.”

  They sat in silence again in the dusty, stifling heat. Sam prickled with sweat and tried to tamp down his annoyance.

  “Listen, kid. Quite frankly I don’t want to be here anymore than you do. I wish like hell you hadn’t found that tunnel, but now that you have, we may as well get to the bottom of it. I’ve found some things stateside that make me think that – well.” He risked a glance at Ethan, who was now cleaning his nails with his pocketknife. “We can talk about all that later.”

  “Sorry.” He didn’t sound sorry, at least not much. But he didn’t sound resentful either. He eyed Sam, judging how much to give away. Finally, he shrugged. “It’s just that, it wasn’t my choice to get involved in this, you know? All I did was do what I was supposed to do and report.” He tossed his hands in the air and flipped his knife. “I thought it was going to be a cool tomb or something. I didn’t think it would have anything to do with… whatever. It’s been fifteen damn years, you know? I have enough on my mind without going back there. I’ve got things to do here. I can’t afford to...”

  Sam knew he was remembering the man who had held a gun to his head and a knife to his throat. A shady figure with ambiguous morals. Ethan looked like he’d done well for himself. Sam sensed the military had fostered a sense of honor and duty in his presence and the a soldier’s responsibilities seemed to have toughened him. Sam could see he took this life seriously and in him recognized something of himself. Ethan had found a family here; one he’d never dared to hope of finding and he’d die before doing anything that would risk his position among them.

  Sam raised his hands and risked a smile. “You and me both, boy. I haven’t forgotten, either.”

  He entered farther into the tent and sat on the floor, maintaining a low position and allowing Ethan, the position of power. He pulled out a bottle of water and offered it to Ethan, who shook his head. Sam pulled it back and drained half in a single gulp. “Man, that was a long ride. Don’t know how you deal with this out here.”

  Ethan cracked a grin. “It’s all right.”

  Sam stretched. “So, what did you find out there?” He gestured to the staggering heat. “I didn’t come all this way in a damn truck to beat around the bush.”

  Finally, Ethan cracked a smile. “No?”

  “Why don’t you take it from the top.”

  Ethan considered him, then relented. He pulled his feet under him and fiddled with his knife, end to end. It seemed to help him think, having something to do with his hands. “We were on a scouting mission. Pretty routine. We’d been in the area a while- hell, we’d been there before- so no one expected any trouble.” Ethan went to work on a splinter with the blade. “Before I knew it, we’ve got the pop-pops hitting us good and people are shouting and boom, we’re in a firefight.” He rolled his eyes. “Not routine, but still nothing to be scared of.”

  Sam kept his face neutral. “Seen a lot of action out here?”

  “Some.”

  A troop passed by, laughing. Ethan tracked their shadows through the wall.

  “As my team hid out in a small underground cave, we found that it almost looked like an abandoned city,” he resumed after they’d passed. “Since we couldn’t go back out, we decided to go deeper.”

  “Regulation, right?”

  Ethan’s grin slanted. “Not exactly. But what else were we gonna do?”

  “Hey, I’m not judging you. I’d have done the same.” Sam laughed. “What happened?”

  Ethan glowered. “We fell. Down. Damn floor caved in. Serves us right, I guess. But it was a pain in the ass at the time. None of us were injured. We were all just grumbling, picking ourselves up, trying to find out how to g
et out of there and keep quiet- didn’t know what was going on up there, you understand? So one of the boys got out a torch to see if we could find our way out and that’s where the interesting part happened. On the wall beside me, there was a picture.”

  “A picture?”

  “Now, all these caves, they sometimes have primitive drawings,” Ethan said, as if he hadn’t heard Sam. “But there was something different. It seemed like some kind of map. And it seemed… accurate.”

  Sam leaned forward. “A map? To what?” He was thinking back to the Yucatan, to his own find in the hills. “Was there anything else on it? Was there-”

  Ethan threw up his hands. “Good God, man! Can you let me finish? Maybe you came all this way just to hear yourself talk?”

  Sam had the grace to look abashed. He needed what this kid knew. And he owed him more than that. “Sorry.”

  “Gee, thanks.” Ethan raked a hand through his short crop of hair, as if remembering the confusion he’d felt that day. “Everyone else had gone on but I told them I had to… tie my boot.” He looked up with a slight, sheepish smile, the first Sam had seen. “I hung back.” He shrugged in defiance. “Curiosity, I guess.”

  Sam grinned but pushed down a twinge of misgiving. “Killed the cat.”

  Ethan raised a sardonic brow. “So I’ve heard.”

  Sam gestured for him to continue. “Well? What did your curiosity get you?”

  Ethan glanced up and to the side, trying to remember, as if reliving the moment. Sam knew because he’d felt the same thing. That image wouldn’t ever leave his mind’s eye. Ethan gestured and Sam watched him snap into report mode. “At the center of the map, there was a little platform. With a… a kind of key on top of it.”

  Sam’s mind was racing a mile a minute now. Was finding another key really this easy? “A drawing of a platform? A drawing of a key? Or was it an actual…”

  Ethan shot him a glance. “A drawing.” Sam’s eyes narrowed but, he felt the boy was telling him the truth. Not the whole truth perhaps, but truth, nonetheless. There’d be time for the rest of it later. “I knew it was something special. I didn’t have time to think about it right then, though, you know? We were still getting shot at- or would be once we got above ground. You know, better position, up above I mean, versus huddled below down some damned hole in the ground, just waiting to be grenaded like dumb bunnies.”