Jack risked a glance behind them.
The bronzemen were twenty metres away now.
Almost on them.
He aimed his flashlight forward . . .
. . . to illuminate the first of the bronzemen coming from that direction. Dozens of others glimmered in the gloom behind the first one, pushing through the now neck-deep water, approaching.
‘Fuck it,’ Jack said.
And with those words, he smashed the hourglass filled with greystone powder against the beam he was gripping and poured its contents into the foul water filling the 600-year-old tunnel.
At first, nothing happened.
The bronzemen kept advancing from both directions.
Then the milky brown water below Jack began to change colour . . . going dark.
The bronzemen kept advancing.
Ten metres away . . .
The water became a deep grey.
Bertie clung to the ceiling like a kid on a jungle gym, his eyes wide. Iolanthe did the same.
Five metres . . .
The bronzemen coming from the Mont were now so close, Jack could see the intricately carved beaks on their faceless metal heads.
‘Jack . . .’ Iolanthe urged.
‘Just a couple more seconds . . .’
Then the water went darker still and—
—Craaaack!
It began to harden.
What happened next was really quite stunning.
As Jack and the others clung to the ceiling, mere inches above the surface of the water filling the tunnel, the neck-deep liquid around the advancing bronzemen turned to stone . . .
. . . and stopped all the bronzemen dead in their tracks.
And suddenly Jack found himself hanging inches above a slab of solid grey stone, a five-foot-deep slab that extended for the full length of the centuries-old tunnel.
And embedded in that slab, their faceless heads sticking up from it, their bodies encased in it, were the bronzemen.
‘Jack West Jr,’ Iolanthe said. ‘If you weren’t already spoken for, I’d kiss you on the lips.’
Bertie was equally impressed. ‘Ooh, my.’
Jack released his grip on his ceiling beams, lowering himself onto the solid greystone slab a few inches below him.
The slab was now basically a new floor for the tunnel; a floor five feet higher than the original one; which essentially turned the tunnel into a superlong crawlspace only a couple of feet in height.
Jack didn’t waste a second.
He rolled onto his stomach and started belly-crawling northward along the slab.
He noted immediately that milky running water was already beginning to pool on top of it.
‘Come on,’ he said. ‘We’re not out of this yet. The tide’s still coming in and we have to crawl the rest of the way before this tunnel floods all the way to the ceiling!’
And so they crawled hurriedly down the length of the English tunnel, skirting the heads of the bronzemen trapped in the stone.
It was scary stuff, crawling so close to the deadly automatons.
As Jack and the others went by them, the bronzemen struggled against the stone, wriggling, but it was in vain: the stone was too strong.
Jack had never been so close to a bronzeman before and now he could see the details of their faces and their heads. Their beak-like noses were truly alien. And covering their shiny metal heads were all manner of etched markings and Thoth symbols.
For the last hundred metres of the tunnel, Jack belly-crawled through one-foot-deep water, with his head held awkwardly above the surface, bumping occasionally against the tunnel’s ceiling.
And then, long after he passed the last bronzeman in the tunnel, he came to the shepherd’s hut and emerged into open air.
Iolanthe and Bertie came out close behind him, filthy and dripping wet, but alive.
In the distance behind them, Jack saw the towering bulk of Mont Saint-Michel, glorious in the moonlight and the glare of the floodlights.
Looking the other way, Jack spotted Nobody over by the fishing shacks, waving to him.
‘Jack!’ Nobody said. ‘Thank God you got out! There was nothing I could do to stop them.’
‘It’s okay,’ Jack said. ‘We found a way.’
‘While you were in there, the scanner intercepted some digital radio signals coming out of the Mont,’ Nobody said. ‘The signals were going from Mont Saint-Michel to a location in the French Alps. I pinpointed that location: the Aiguille du Midi Observatory near Mont Blanc. It’s a mountaintop astronomical observatory.’
Jack nodded. ‘When Mendoza and Sphinx did the Fall, I heard them corresponding with one of the Knights of the Golden Eight—Jaeger Vier, Hunter Four—at some kind of observatory in the Alps. They were talking about the pedestal on the moon.’
Jack shook his head. ‘This has been a disaster. Let’s hope Zoe and my mother are having better luck in Rome.’
The Vatican
Rome, Italy
23 December, 2000 hours
At the exact moment that Jack had been venturing into Mont Saint-Michel in France, Zoe and Mae had been arriving in Rome with Rufus and Sisters Lynda and Agnes.
It was evening and crowding behind Rufus in the cockpit of the Sukhoi, the four women saw the glow of Rome’s lights on the horizon long before they laid eyes on the city itself.
As their plane came closer, however, they saw the columns of smoke rising into the night-time sky.
Then the Eternal City came into view and Mae gasped.
‘A Siren bell was definitely rung here, just like in Moscow,’ she said.
Zoe said, ‘Only unlike Moscow, it looks like this one went off sometime during the day, while the population was awake.’
The results had been devastating.
Fires burned everywhere.
Commercial airliners had crashed at Leonardo Da Vinci International Airport and in the suburbs around it.
Zoe could see at least twelve planes variously smashed against apartment blocks, office towers, freeways and homes. Ten of the planes were still ablaze.
All over the city, cars and buses had crashed.
A couple of open-topped tour buses lay crumpled against the Colosseum, their comatose passengers strewn every which way.
More tourist buses had toppled into the Tiber River.
At the city’s enormous railway station, a giant column of black smoke rose into the sky: the result of two bullet trains that had slammed at full speed into the terminal when their drivers had been struck unconscious.
Judging from the remains—smashed and burning engine cars and crumpled carriages that lay on their sides, twisted like giant dead snakes—the impacts had been colossal.
And then there were the people.
They lay everywhere, having collapsed where they stood when the bell had rung.
Tourists, locals, workers, the homeless. They all lay sprawled on the ground, unconscious.
‘Jesus H. Christ . . .’ Rufus breathed as he surveyed the sleeping city. ‘Oh, sorry. Blasphemy,’ he added when he saw Sisters Lynda and Agnes in the rear of the cockpit.
‘Never mind,’ Sister Lynda said. ‘By the way, his actual name was Jesus of Nazareth and he was just a man. A very charismatic and influential man, to be sure, and part of the royal world, but still just a man.’
Zoe was scanning the empty city.
Her eyes landed on the gigantic dome of St Peter’s Basilica, towering over the rest of Rome. The verdant gardens of the Vatican flanked it, a rare splash of green amid the otherwise grey-white metropolis.
‘Take us in, Rufus. All the way to St Peter’s.’
As they zoomed in over the silent city, Zoe turned to Sister Lynda. ‘All right, tell me more about this Javier Journal. What is it and who’s Javier? I don’t know
of any famous Javiers.’
Lynda smiled. ‘Oh, you know him. He was one of the Church’s greatest explorers and missionaries. You just know him by his anglicised name. In the Church, he goes by the name Francisco Javier, but to the wider world he is known as Francis Xavier.’
‘The Jesuit priest who went to India and Asia to spread the faith?’ Zoe said.
‘The very same,’ Lynda said. ‘Francis Xavier was sent to Asia in 1541 by Pope Paul III ostensibly to convert the heathens there, but what few people know is that Pope Paul also gave Xavier a secret mission to accomplish.
‘Xavier’s efforts to achieve that secret task were chronicled in a journal he sent back to the Vatican just before his death in 1552. To those who know about it, it is called Javier’s Journal, and according to one of our nuns who saw it centuries ago, it mentions the locations of at least one of the iron mountains. For nearly five hundred years, it has resided in the Vatican Secret Archives.’
A few minutes later, its engines booming, the Sukhoi hovered over St Peter’s Square.
The usually bustling square was unnaturally still.
Thousands of tourists lay on the ground, struck down by the bell. Tour buses and cars had crashed into bollards and buildings. One bus lay up against the towering obelisk that rose up out of the centre of the square.
Rufus landed the Sukhoi right in front of the steps of St Peter’s Basilica, since that was the only place to land it without accidentally crushing some poor sleeping soul.
Zoe and the others emerged from the plane’s bomb bay and gazed out over the ancient city of Rome, the Eternal City, now the silent city.
Mae gazed at all the bodies. ‘Look at them all.’
‘You will wake as slaves . . .’ Zoe said softly.
Sister Lynda grimaced. ‘Let’s try to avoid that.’
It was then that they saw the Pope’s dead body.
The Pope lay flat on the ground with a star-shaped splatter of blood around his blasted-open head.
‘Looks like things didn’t end well for him,’ Lynda observed.
‘Sphinx was here,’ Zoe said. ‘And he wasn’t friendly.’
Lynda said, ‘I imagine he got what he needed from the Pope and then killed him. That’s Hardin. He uses people until they are no longer of value to him and then discards them.’
‘Where should we start?’ Mae asked.
‘Well,’ Zoe said, ‘with everybody knocked out, getting into the inner sanctums of the Vatican isn’t going to be too much of a problem.’
Lynda said, ‘I suggest we check two places: the Secret Archives and the Pope’s private study in the Apostolic Palace.’
‘The Pope’s private study?’ Sister Agnes said.
‘Every day the Pope receives a briefing on all pressing matters, security and otherwise. He will have got one today and I imagine it’ll contain information relevant to our mission. That briefing will be in his private study.’
‘And the Secret Archives?’ Rufus asked.
Zoe answered him. ‘That’s where the journal is, in Vault IX. The Archives are one of the most heavily guarded repositories of ancient knowledge in the world. If the building were ever opened to the public, it would be a museum to rival the Louvre.’
Lynda nodded in agreement. ‘Few outside of the most senior members of the Church have been allowed to see its collection of artefacts. Largely, that’s because many of those artefacts do not support Catholic teaching. But I can’t say that from personal experience, since I’ve never been down there, because it’s strictly no women allowed.’
‘Not today,’ Mae said.
‘No, not today,’ Zoe said. ‘Lynda and Mae, you go to Vault IX in the Archives and find the journal. Agnes and I will go to the Papal Apartments to check out the Pope’s daily briefing.’
‘Got it,’ Mae said.
‘What about me?’ Rufus asked.
‘Find somewhere close by yet out of sight to park your bird,’ Zoe said, ‘but, Rufus, keep the engines running.’
For a thousand years the Pope’s private offices and study were off limits to women but Zoe and Sister Agnes just pushed open the door and strode into them unchallenged.
Bodies lay strewn around the entry vestibule: Swiss Guardsmen dressed in their vividly coloured uniforms; cardinals with red sashes and skullcaps; priests in black shirts and white collars.
All the furnishings were gilt-edged and plush, lavish in the extreme. The Church’s wealth was eagerly on display.
Zoe stepped right over the bodies and hurried into the corner suite that was the Pope’s private quarters.
‘Check his secretary’s desk,’ she said to Agnes as they passed through an anteroom.
‘Got it.’
Zoe opened the ornate oak doors to the Pope’s private study.
She saw the artwork first: originals by Raphael, Botticelli and Michelangelo.
‘Very nice,’ she breathed.
In the anteroom, Sister Agnes sat at the Pope’s secretary’s desk. A young priest lay sleeping on the floor under the desk, having slipped out of his chair as he had succumbed to the bell’s song.
Agnes clicked on his mouse to awaken his computer while she rifled through his desk drawers.
‘Really?’ she said, spotting an Italian gay porn magazine hidden deep within one drawer.
Inside the papal study, Zoe sat down at the Pope’s broad mahogany desk, flanked by his priceless paintings.
She saw it instantly, among some other documents on the desk, a red folder marked in Italian: segretissimo.
top secret.
She flung it open and started reading.
The gargantuan nave of St Peter’s Basilica is usually a place of sombre reflection, reverent movement and the odd echoing prayer or hymn.
Today, Mae and Sister Lynda ran down its length at full speed.
The nave is truly an architectural marvel: 211 metres long and 136 metres high, it can hold 20,000 worshippers.
Most of those worshippers would usually be intensely focused on Bernini’s baldacchino, the 90-foot-tall bronze canopy in the heart of the cathedral that covers the Altar of St Peter and, buried beneath that altar, the reputed tomb of St Peter the Apostle himself.
Mae and Lynda ran right past it.
They were heading for the Vatican Secret Archives and this was the quickest way there.
From the basilica, they turned right, charging through the Sistine Chapel—ignoring the ceiling famously painted by Michelangelo with its notoriously heretical depiction of God emerging from the human brain—and into the private dressing areas of the cardinals.
Sister Lynda paused in mid-stride as they hurried through the Sistine Chapel’s dressing chamber.
‘Mae,’ she said, ‘you do realise that no women have ever been through here.’
Mae grimaced. ‘Isn’t it sad that none of the three Abrahamic religions—Christianity, Judaism and Islam—treat women well?’
Sister Lynda said, ‘More than anything, it’s just a waste of talent.’
They hurried toward the Secret Archives.
In the Pope’s private study, Zoe read the pontiff’s daily briefings for the last week.
Various incidents leapt out at her.
Sphinx had visited the Vatican earlier that day and he had wanted two things: the Vatican Globe and the blue Siren bell, which he called the Orphean Bell.
The Pope had written to his senior advisers:
. . . we will give the globe to Sphinx but not all of our historical notes about the Orphean Bell. We should keep the bell from him for now, to ensure that he keeps his promises. Our key notes about its location have been safely taken to Albano’s emissary . . .
‘Albano’s emissary?’ Zoe said aloud. She called to Sister Agnes in the anteroom. ‘Do you know anyone named Albano? Or who his emissary might be?’
‘I think there’s a Duke of Albano,’ Agnes called back. ‘His emissary would be an underling, I suppose.’
‘We’ll have to figure out who he is—oh, God,’ Zoe said.
‘What? What is it?’ Agnes poked her head inside the study.
Zoe was looking at another pair of documents in the file.
The first was a message to the Pope.
Zoe read it aloud:
‘Your Eminence, our agents went in search of the rogue nun, Dr Tracy Lynn Smith. We located her working in a refugee camp in Sicily. But by the time we arrived there, she had fled.
‘We have intelligence that she is now working with Médecins Sans Frontières somewhere in Syria. We are following up those leads.’
The Pope’s response was on a second document, clipped to the first one:
‘Find her and kill her.’
Zoe turned to Agnes. ‘Dr Tracy Smith. Lynda mentioned her back at Hades’s estate. Something about her doing research into the Siren bells. She was one of your nuns.’
‘She was, yes,’ Agnes said. ‘Tracy left our order a year ago, then went off the grid.’
Zoe said, ‘Must be some woman for the Church to put out a hit on her.’
‘She was,’ Agnes said. ‘Sister Tracy was a brilliant doctor. An ear-nose-and-throat specialist. Before she left, she was one of our order’s foremost experts on the Siren bells. She did detailed studies on them in soundproof chambers: measured their acoustic wavelengths, how they affected the inner ear, all sorts of things.
‘But she was also passionate about the plight of migrants and the poor. In the end, she left our order in disgust, saying that it was foolish to be consumed with high celestial matters while ordinary people starved. It doesn’t surprise me to hear she ended up tending to refugees in Sicily or that she might have gone to work with Doctors Without Borders in some war zone in Syria. That was Tracy.’
‘And now the Catholic Church wants her dead,’ Zoe said. ‘Whatever war zone she’s in, we need to find Dr Tracy Smith before their assassins do.’
The entrance to the underground vaults of the Vatican Secret Archives can be found in the Belvedere Courtyard, a wide rectangular space with a gorgeous lawn.
The Two Lost Mountains - Jack West Jr Series 06 (2020) Page 14