Book of the Dead

by Greig Beck

  He walked slowly towards Agent Kahan. “Now, to you…and for you, I do have questions, and yes, you will answer them. Your only reward will be death. But by the time I finish, it will be the most blessed reward any man on this Earth could wish for.” He pretended to count for a moment. “You have ten fingers, ten toes, a nose, two ears…and a penis – plenty of things to remove, and I promise you, each will be more painful than the last.”

  Drummond turned and nodded to Kroen, who walked over, and grabbed the man’s left hand. He levered up one finger, and held it, its joint now in the jaws of the bolt cutters. Kroen looked to Drummond, waiting.

  “Question one.” Charles Drummond stepped in front of Kahan. “Agent Kahan, please tell me if they believe they can read it?”

  *

  It was five in the afternoon and they were dry, warm and sitting together in the café inside the hotel. Matt noticed that Adira and Baruk looked on high alert, and he hated it – if the Mossad woman was nervous, then he sure should be.

  Adira had called for more agents as support, and also a team to find the missing men. But they wouldn’t arrive until the next morning, and the dive needed to be undertaken that night. By the morning, events would have already overtaken them, or not.

  Matt closed his eyes and leaned back, luxuriating in a beam of sun that came though a tall window and bathed the rear of his neck. He tried to shut out anything remotely to do with the Book so his mind could rest. At eleven forty-five that night, they needed to be descending on the sunken island of Pharos – the moon would be at its zenith at midnight and they needed to be there, ready. If something was going to occur, they would be on top of it, waiting and watching.

  “It’s too dangerous; we should think about aborting, or at least waiting for backup,” Andy said.

  “No, we need the book. End of discussion.” Tania snapped back.

  “I agree; we can’t wait,” Abrams said. “It’ll be another month until the next full moon.” He snorted and shook his head. “Nix that, it’ll be another thirteen hundred years until the next planetary convergence, and frankly, given what Dr Albadi told us, we don’t have thirteen hundred hours. We need answers, now, and if, as we believe, Adira’s men have been taken, then whoever did take them is only one step behind us. If we abort, we might be handing the Book over them.” His face was grim. “As risky as it sounds, we have to search tonight with or without backup. We’ve got to believe we’re still in front.”

  The silence stretched. All eyes were fixed on the tabletop as they retreated to their thoughts. At last Adira spoke. “Major Abrams is correct. We have no choice but to continue.” She got to her feet. “Time for rest. Eat in your rooms and be down the front at nine-thirty pm. Baruk and I will be waiting.”

  Matt saw Tania look across at him and raise her eyebrows. He shook his head, but she just smiled wider, and nodded subtly.

  Adira’s voice was cutting. “I suggest we all get some rest. Focus on what we need to do tonight, rather than on our genitals.”

  Matt blushed, Tania looked away, and Andy’s head jerked up, his brow furrowed in confusion.

  Within ten minutes, Matt was flopped on his bed, feeling drained.

  He punched the pillow behind his head, but knew he’d never actually sleep – the best he’d be able to do was close his eyes and try and relax his muscles, if not his mind.

  There came a knock on his door. “It’s me.” Tania’s whispered voice.

  “Go away.” He hissed to the door.

  The knock came again. “It’s…important.” The words were breathy.

  He groaned…and then let her in.

  *

  The wind had fallen away and the sea was like a sheet of oil. Mahmood flicked a cigarette into the water as Adira came into his small open cabin. She handed him over some notes – more than double what he was normally paid. They talked quietly for a second or two and he laughed and nodded, and then turned out the single light, so they were all in darkness.

  Matt sat in silence, just like the others. They were all thinking through what had brought them there, the coming dive, the missing Israeli agents, and who it was who had taken them and was probably watching them all right now.

  The boat chugged directly out from the coast, and Mahmood glanced over his shoulder from time to time, lining the stern up with landmarks on the shore. It was dark, and in the cabin they could only tell he had turned when the red dot of his cigarette was pointed directly at them.

  Outside on deck, there was more light – the moon was already huge as it steadily rose overhead and created a silver path on the still water that was an endless black plain. Below water, Matt knew there was more activity – movement, predator and prey, eyes already on them.

  In fifteen minutes the boat slowed, and then stopped. Just as before, Mahmood let the craft coast for a moment or two, and then pushed the anchor over the side. He let out ten more feet of rope, tied off, and then lit another cigarette. He watched the shoreline for a few seconds before nodding, satisfied with his position, and then spoke a few words to Adira as he sat down to watch the divers.

  Adira pointed. “The island is about fifty feet to our north. But he said there is a current running tonight, so we must take that into consideration in our dive as it can push us off course. He will leave the lantern alight on the bow – it will be our beacon, our only beacon: if we surface away from where we went in, just head for that.”

  “Do we trust him?” Abrams asked quietly.

  “I trust no one. Baruk will remain with him again. But it is not our captain I would be concerned about. If another boat comes, we might not know until we surface.”

  Matt was looking over the side at the dark water. “Did I hear someone mention sharks before?”

  “Yes, plenty,” Adira said, readying her equipment. “There are great white, bull shark, tiger – all very big and aggressive. But I hear you only need to punch them on the nose, yes?” She looked at him deadpan for several seconds, before breaking into a grin. “I joke – don’t worry about them, Professor. They will not bother us.”

  I’m not worried; I’ve faced worse, Matt thought

  Adira looked up at the sky and then at her watch. “In about fifteen minutes, the moon will begin to be at its absolute zenith. It will pass through that apex for only about twelve minutes. If there is an opening, and we can find it, and enter it, then we will have less than that to locate the Book and get out.”

  “Or we spend the next thirteen hundred years waiting for the next celestial convergence,” Matt finished.

  “We can do this,” Tania said.

  Matt saw she seemed to be speaking to herself. He checked his own equipment – this time they had headlamps, wrist lights and extra handheld flashlights with a couple of large 35-watt spotlights that could be positioned on stands.

  One after the other they dropped over the side, with Andy and Hartogg the first to the bottom, aided by the crowbars they carried. Anyone looking down from above would have seen the white pipes of light moving under the water, and nothing of the black-wetsuited divers behind them.

  Matt felt he was holding his breath on the way down. The walls of complete blackness surrounding him made him feel tiny and vulnerable. His scalp prickled, and he couldn’t help feeling he was being watched from somewhere out in the dark.

  In a few minutes they were at the island that grew up out of the sand. They broke into two teams – Matt, Andy, and Hartogg, and then Abrams, Tania, and Adira – once again as directed by Adira. Matt could tell she felt the need to keep an eye on Tania. There was quite clearly a great degree of dislike growing between the women, and he doubted it had anything to do with him.

  Matt’s team descended into the first crevice and slowly drifted along its ravine walls, slowing now and then to inspect odd shapes or protrusions. After a few minutes they gave up and drifted to the island’s surface.

  They swam to the other team’s position, hovering over their split in the seamount. Looking down, Matt cou
ld see the pathways of white light, but this time, he could also see the divers as the glow of the full moon was now reaching down into the bottom of the crevice. After another few minutes the divers joined up. Adira looked at her watch, and her frustration was clear.

  Matt nudged Adira and pointed up at the moon – it was like a giant floating spaceship above them, and was so bright that the divers cast shadows. Everything was a twilight silver, and small plankton, invisible before, now phosphoresced like a glowing snowstorm around them. Fish seemed oddly excited and darted in and out of the cracks in the rock, and even the lobster and huge crabs were drawn onto rock ledges to peer at the divers, like theatregoers leaning out of their boxes.

  Adira nodded in return – the moon was peaking, and they were about to enter the apex period – it would be like this for another ten minutes only.

  Matt noticed a few of the divers had stopped using their lights, and it gave him an idea. He tapped the rock wall to get everyone’s attention, pointed to his light and shut it off. After a few seconds everyone understood, and one after the other the lights went out.

  As Matt expected, the lights weren’t needed, and were in fact hiding more than they were revealing. Back along the rift in the island, the slab of stone they had seen in the earlier dive now gave off a faint glow. He shot towards it, and saw that there was a huge symbol showing on its surface.

  He approached it, Andy at his side. The geologist went to dig his crowbar in beside it, but Matt waved him away. He ran a hand over the whorls and long strokes – there was no indentation, the symbol itself gave off luminosity like a projection.

  As Matt’s hand finished his tracing of the symbol, the huge stone swung as if on a hinge. They all could hear and feel the vibrations running through the water. Ancient coral and other debris floated away, but just inside, Matt could see huge cogs of a clockwork mechanism working. He’d seen something like it before – the Greek Antikythera mechanism. That was an ancient mechanical device, a computer, created over two thousand years earlier, and designed to predict astronomical positions and eclipses.

  No technological device coming even close to it in complexity would exist for another fourteen hundred years. Who else but the Greeks could construct a hiding place such as this, and then use the world’s first computer to seal it away? Matt thought.

  There was a flicker of shadow, as if something above momentarily eclipsed the moon’s glow, but when they looked up there was nothing.

  Matt turned and gave the group a thumbs up, and went to enter, before Adira pulled him roughly back. She held a finger up in front of his face, and then turned and swam in first. In exactly one minute she returned, pointed to Matt first, then Abrams, and Tania. She held her hand up flat to Andy and Hartogg – Stay, it said.

  Andy began to protest, but Adira pointed to both him and Hartogg and then the huge door and then made an opening motion with her hands and arms. Hartogg nodded, then Andy: Keep the door open.

  Matt bet both men were wondering how the hell they’d accomplish that feat with a couple of crowbars, if the many-ton door started to close.

  All flashlights came back on as Adira led them in and then along a stone passage to a set of stairs climbing out of the water. There was little or no growth, testifying to just how tightly the door must have been sealed – many ocean plants, sponges and algae started out as microscopic spores easily able to fit into the tiniest of cracks. That seal, coupled with the size of the machinery, meant it was no wonder other divers had been unable to detect anything other than a deeply embedded block of stone, Matt guessed.

  Ancient Greek writing was carved into the corridor walls, but when Matt became spellbound by a certain phrase or image, Adira yanked him forward – they had minutes, and already time was becoming a scarce commodity.

  Adira came to the steps first, and, removing the fins from her feet, climbed them, lifting herself free from the water. Matt, Abrams, and Tania followed. The Mossad agent carefully took the breathing apparatus from her mouth, and sniffed. She winced and wrinkled her nose, but then nodded.

  “Stale, very, but I think not toxic,” she said, waving her light around.

  “I hope so,” Matt said. “Because those guys sure didn’t die of old age.”

  Piled like corded wood just past the edge of the steps were half a dozen skeletons, all in the robes and gold-fiber belts of Alexandrian scholars.

  Tania kneeled beside them. “Ptolemaic clothing; must have been the curators.” She turned one of the skulls. “Healthy, at least before they died. Wonder whether they decided to stay – the caretakers for eternity.”

  “Job for life,” Matt said grimly.

  Adira clicked her fingers twice. “Or they were slow and became sealed in by the door mechanism. I have no desire to be one of the next skeletons.” She spun. “Professor, we need to find that book, now. Everyone spread out.”

  The flashlight beams lifted higher. Tania gasped, her mouth hanging open as she slowly panned her large light. “This is truly the Bibliotheca Alexandrina.” She laughed softly, tears, not salt water making her eyes wet and shining in the darkness.

  They found themselves on a walkway built into the side of the hollowed-out island. A huge central room was sunk into the floor, and now it became clear why the ocean had to be kept so thoroughly at bay – inside was bone dry, and contained a treasure trove from the ages.

  Matt didn’t know where to start – he could see magnificent statues, some of Greek gods intermixed with Egyptian and Roman. There were rulers, other great figures of the time, in marble, polished granite and coated in gold. There were onyx sphinxes, milky alabaster Anubis sculptures, many startlingly different when compared to each other, and not possibly done by the same artist or even in the same era.

  Tania held her arms wide. “The riches of all the known world.”

  “Not just the riches; also the knowledge,” Matt said, walking slowly down the steps and then in among artifacts. There were shelves and shelves piled high with scrolls. He groaned. “Just for a day down here, just one day. I wish Dr Albadi could have seen this.”

  He moved his light around the room. Golden caskets with depictions of rays of light causing armies to fall; ornate oil lamps with warnings of djinn; a huge age-tarnished bronze urn, a dozen feet across, inscribed with the image of a hideous face screaming in fury, and covered in coiling rope or serpents; there were statues of monstrous Cyclops; and so much more.

  Matt turned, feeling exhilarated and near overwhelmed. “The caretakers, I don’t think they were locked in. I think they stayed on purpose – they valued knowledge over life.”

  “Move it!” Adira’s screamed words reverberated around the large room, echoing the chastisement back at them, over and over.

  Their hunt sped up – caskets of golden objects were ignored, silver weapons, some studded with brilliant stones, or intricate machines were all now knocked aside. Matt found a long table stacked with scrolls that fell to pieces in his hands, but from the dry scraps of Egyptian and Greek he read, he knew they were not what he sought.

  Tania smoothed out a large sheet of some sort of hide that was beautifully decorated with a map. “You’re not going to believe what this is – it’s a map of Aztlan – That’s the ancient name for Atlantis. You’re not going to believe where it is…”

  “Forget it.” Matt snorted. “Seen it.”

  “Here!” Abrams called from the far end of the chamber.

  Matt sprinted, leaping over chests and skirting marble statues. The major shone his light on a small coffin-shaped box that was so dark and polished it looked like black glass. He had pushed the lid aside, and now stood back.

  Matt came over and peered in – inside there was another box, this one gold, and on its lid the same sort of strange glyphs he had seen in the sink holes. He reached in and gently lifted the lid. Immediately he felt a wave of nauseating dizziness, as if some sort of radiation had been released from the confines of the receptacle.

  There was a single
item – a book – it was about a foot in length, and just less than that in width. The cover was of some sort of soft-looking leather, heavily tooled, the image of an inhuman face set into a boiling mass of coiling tentacles in the center. The craftsman had used large polished rubies for the eyes; this managed to imbue it with a lifelike quality that was both beautiful and unsettling.

  “I think this is it,” Matt said weakly.

  “Grab it, bag it, and let’s go.” Adira’s voice was urgent.

  Matt shut her out, and reached in slowly, his hands shaking. Beside him, he heard Abrams shake out a plastic bag and hold it open. Matt’s fingers flexed, but it felt as he were holding a strong magnet, and approaching another of an opposing pole. His fingers tingled as they hung over the odd leather.

  Just then, from the sunken steps, there came a dull clunk. Everyone froze and Adira sucked in a breath, before roaring over their heads, “The door!”

  She pushed past Matt, grabbed the book and jammed it into Abrams’s bag. The major rolled it tight, and then stuck it into yet another plastic bag. He unzipped his suit and pushed it inside. He was already starting to sprint for the steps.

  “Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go.”

  They all ran now, flinging priceless relics out of the way, Abrams shouldering aside an ancient wooden crucifix, dark stains on each of its arms, and then all throwing themselves into the water. Vibrations filled the chamber, and they could feel the dull thunk of heavy metal and stonework gears grinding against each other right through their skin.

  Matt remembered the corridor was about twenty feet long – short, but narrow, so they could not all travel side by side – someone would be last. He tried hard to remember how long it had taken the thing to open – five seconds, ten, twenty? Please be twenty, he prayed.

  Up ahead, Matt could see a light waving back and froth – Hartogg or Andy, signaling – so close. They came to the end and the huge door began its slow swing. Matt turned and saw the massive stone cogs working over each other as the clockwork machine worked to draw the gigantic slab up tight against the crevice wall.