The Shroud of Heaven

by Sean Ellis

  Kismet’s lungs were burning with a breath held for too long, but he dared not even let it out in a subtle exhalation. The menacing arachnid would surely detect the movement and plant its sting on his exposed face. He felt his throat tightening with the urge to exhale and draw a fresh breath, but he willed the impulse away and continued moving his foot to draw the creature away. The scorpion responded, moving from his cheek onto his throat and over the flap of his collar. Kismet slowly exhaled in relief as the pincher claws at last broke contact with his unprotected skin.

  He could not see Marie beside him and heard no sound to indicate whether she was similarly overrun by the scaly denizens of the ossuary. He took her silence as a good sign, but if she was not currently plagued, it would only be a matter of time before she too felt the pinch of scorpion appendages on her skin or in her hair. When that happened, he had no doubt that she would erupt in a screaming fit that would bring them all down on her.

  “Marie.” He let the words out in a low whisper through clenched teeth. “On the count of three, we’re going to get out of here as fast as we can, got it?”

  There was a guttural affirmative. He could hear her better now, breathing rapidly, panicked.

  “It doesn’t have to look pretty,” he continued. “We just have to move. Do you see where the stairs are? That’s as far as we have to go.”

  “Got it.”

  “Okay. Take a deep breath.” He took his own advice, filling his lungs with the odious atmosphere of the crypt, then exhaled half of it. “One…two…three!”

  On the final number, he threw the MagLite with a snap of the wrist. The scorpion on his hand had no time to attack, but was flung away as the flashlight arced through the air. There was a scattering of random rays into various nooks of the chamber as the light rattled down onto the mesh of skeletons. Upon landing, the heavy aluminum tube slipped into a crevice between the bones and continued its journey, noisily rattling through the layered remains and casting an eerie shadow show on the ceiling of the vast hall.

  Kismet and Marie paid no attention to the MagLite’s final moments. They were already scrambling to avoid joining the ranks of the permanent occupants. Just as he had suggested, their hasty attempt to reach the staircase was not a study in graceful movement. The bones shifted and broke beneath them, dropping them deeper into the quagmire, but the impetus driving them granted a nearly superhuman strength. Much like a run through deep snow, Kismet’s legs scattered the remains with each step, hooking the interlaced bones with his feet and thrusting them out of the way as he plowed forward. Behind him, Marie was having similar success.

  The sacrifice of the flashlight however had limited their ability to navigate by sight. The MagLite’s rays were indistinct behind the curtain of bone, forcing them to follow a path marked only in their memories. In the frenzy to escape, Kismet could only hope that they stayed on course. Then the sudden darkness yielded an almost insignificant bit of luck.

  Their eyes were drawn to a slightly elevated point only a short distance away. In the back of his mind, Kismet recognized it as the Cyalume stick he had initially dropped into the stairwell. It had rolled down several steps before coming to rest near the base of the flight. Though its yellow light provided scant illumination, it shone like a beacon, guiding them to safety.

  Kismet’s feet abruptly hit something solid—stone treads buried beneath a covering of skeletons—and he redoubled his efforts. As he emerged from the mire, he swung his arms out, caught hold of Marie’s wrist, and yanked her from the bony embrace of the ossuary, but their flight did not end there. Pausing only long enough to scoop up the light-stick, Kismet led the way up the steep staircase. The crunching noise of their footsteps suggested that simply escaping the mass grave had not ended their encounter with the venomous denizens of the chamber.

  A second beacon materialized in the darkness ahead; a single shaft of brilliant light stabbing down from above. Kismet gave an audible sigh of relief as they stepped into the cone of illumination cast by the powerful lantern Hussein had activated in order to guide them back. Both he and Marie sagged onto the steps beneath the protective aegis of overhead light, catching their breath and letting the adrenaline drain from their extremities.

  “Nick? What happened?”

  Kismet took several more deep breaths before looking up to answer Chiron. “Marie fell.”

  The short statement did not begin to explain what they had seen and experienced in the chamber below, but Kismet found that as he tried to put it into words, he kept sticking on that initial point: why had Marie fallen? Why had she even attempted to descend the dark stairway alone?

  “Did you find anything?”

  Kismet looked up again. “What we found…no, there’s nothing down there. Get us out of here and I’ll tell you all about it.”

  He dragged himself erect then proffered a hand to Marie. Shelving his doubts, he focused on the more immediate problem of how to escape the tunnel shaft. The well-lit opening where Hussein and Chiron waited was a good three meters from the stair tread directly below. The narrow steps were a precarious platform from which to attempt an ascent, and even more so for what Kismet had in mind. His gaze flickered between the opening and the steps, trying to gauge the optimal location from which to boost Marie high enough for the others to pull her clear. He finally settled on a position that placed him sideways beneath the opening, squatting on one leg while the other was extended downward as a brace.

  “All right, let’s get you out of here.”

  She made no effort to hide her relief. Despite the awkwardness of using a living stepladder, she gripped his shoulder and planted her foot on his thigh. Her balance did not waver as she lifted herself from the stairs then reached up to take Hussein’s hand, leaving Kismet to wonder how she had fallen in the first place. She seemed as footsure as a tightrope walker. After only a few seconds, her weight lifted and she rose through the hole. There was a moment of darkness as her body eclipsed the bright lantern and Kismet was once more alone in the stairwell.

  When the light returned, he began looking around to plan his own exfiltration, but something was different. As he stood and brought his extended leg back up, he both heard and felt a crunch beneath his boot soles. The brilliance of the lantern had compromised his ability to see into the shadowy crenellated recesses of the steps, but he was sure of one thing: there had been nothing on the bare stone moments before. He knew without looking what had caused the sound and hastened up several steps as a pure reflex. Just as quickly, dark menacing shapes began to materialize under the rays of the lantern. The multi-appendaged swarm had followed them from the ossuary. The scorpions, as kings of their food chain, once more led the charge, but behind them were species of arachnids and insects too numerous and diverse to identify.

  Kismet backed up the stairwell, instinctively withdrawing from the creeping menace. His head was now level with the opening and he could see the faces of his companions, staring down in horrified disbelief as the miniature army overwhelmed the area where he and Marie had rested only moments before. Drawing a deep breath, he flexed his legs and thrust himself toward the opening.

  His fingertips grazed the edge of the hole and in a single instant, bloated out of proportion by the rush of adrenaline, he knew that his hold would fail.He would rebound from the overhang and plunge headlong into the swarm. But then, as his weight came down and his fingers slipped against the stone, Hussein seized his forearms with an iron grip.

  He hung there like an offering, arms extended over his head while his feet dangled above the squirming mass. Hussein’s hold seemed to be failing—he could feel his wrists slipping through the young man’s hands—but it was just an illusion. With Marie and Chiron lending their support, the Iraqi scholar hauled Kismet’s upper body through the hole in a single heave.

  Hussein did not immediately let go, even though his ferocious pull had caused him to lose his footing and fall backward. His eyes reflected his determination—he would not let go until
Kismet’s feet were once more on solid ground—but his grin was a triumphant assertion of victory. Kismet returned the smile with a grateful nod, but in that instant, Hussein’s expression changed to a mask of sheer terror.

  A single black scorpion scuttled along Kismet’s right arm and darted toward the exposed flesh of the young Iraqi’s hand. Hussein instinctively let go of Kismet, shaking his hand to thwart the attack, but it was already too late. The creature’s pincers closed around his fingers and it jabbed forward with its tail, planting its sting.

  Kismet immediately began sliding back through the hole. His hands curled into claws, fingertips scratching against the smooth rock for a purchase, but the forces of gravity and inertia were allied against him. As his chest scraped over the stone lip, the buttons popped from his shirt like a burst from a machine gun.

  And then he stopped.

  Nothing he had done in the brief struggle had arrested his fall. At the last possible instant however, Marie had leapt into motion, bracing her feet against the tunnel wall and knotting her fingers in the fabric of his shirt. The strain of halting his slide and simply holding him was evident in the bunched muscles of her jaw line, and Kismet knew that without more assistance, her efforts would merely serve to postpone the inevitable.

  Hussein wailed in agony, unable to shake the scorpion free. In desperation, he slammed his fist against the wall, crushing the relentless arachnid even as it stung him again. Through the pain, he remembered his friend’s peril and hastened to relieve Marie. Kismet could see bright red welts erupting like tiny volcanoes on the back of the young man’s right hand and blood streaming from the wounds caused by the scissor-like claws. Only when he and Marie had nearly succeeded in drawing Kismet back from the brink, did Chiron shake off his languor and lend a hand.

  As soon as Kismet’s knees touched the stone, he rasped: “I’m good. Let go.” His first concern was to make sure that the scorpion that had stung Hussein was a solitary hitchhiker—it was—then he rushed to help the young scholar.

  Hussein’s hand had swollen like a balloon. The stings had darkened and spread to form a single grotesque bruise. Kismet searched his memory for the first-aid treatment for venomous bites, but his ability to offer aid was limited by the scant medical supplies they had brought along. He activated two instant cold-compresses and bound these to the affected area with a loose wrapping of bandages. Beyond the initial pain and surprise of the attack, the swelling seemed to be the only ill effect from the toxin.

  Chiron watched as Kismet finished ministering to the young man, then broke his silence. “Nick, what did you find down there?”

  Kismet gave him a sharp look. He had never known the Frenchman to be so single-minded, and had in fact always thought of him as a compassionate figure. His apparent disregard for Hussein’s misery seemed out of character. “Nothing. Whatever was down there was completely looted when this tunnel was cut.”

  “Nothing?”

  “Bones,” Marie intoned. “Nothing but bones.”

  “The vault has been turned into a mass grave,” explained Kismet. “There are hundreds of skeletons down there. Maybe thousands.”

  “Babylonian slaves?” wondered Chiron.

  Kismet felt profoundly uncomfortable with the older man’s eagerness for all the gruesome details. “Not Babylonian and not ancient, but slaves nonetheless: Saddam’s workforce. After they excavated this tunnel, he had them all slaughtered to keep its existence secret.”

  Marie shuddered involuntarily, but offered nothing more. Despite his suffering, Hussein was also keenly attentive, his expression revealing that he was all too familiar with atrocities of the sort Kismet was describing.

  “Perhaps we have been looking for the wrong treasure chamber,” Chiron mused.

  “It makes no difference now. We have to get Hussein back to the surface.”

  “He can go back alone. Or with Marie. We need to find out where this tunnel leads.”

  Kismet stared in disbelief at his old mentor, but before he could begin to formulate a contrary argument, Hussein interjected. “I am able to continue. The sting of this creature—it is not fatal.”

  “If Hussein can go on,” voiced Marie, “I vote to continue our search as well. I also would like to know where this tunnel leads.”

  As the lone dissenting voice, Kismet fought back an urge to rage at his associates. “It doesn’t matter. There’s no reason to continue. Whatever we hoped to find is long gone. If Saddam’s engineers found some kind of treasure trove, they would have moved it—” he fixed a stern gaze on Chiron, “—or destroyed anything of religious significance.”

  “Nick.” Chiron’s tone was passionate and pleading. “We’re here. We’ve come so far… you have brought us this far. Don’t you want to see where this path leads?”

  Kismet sensed his friend was talking about more than just the tunnel. He stared back silently for a moment, then glanced once more at the wounded Iraqi. “Hussein, are you sure you can make it?”

  In spite of the cool air in the tunnel, the young man’s forehead was beaded with droplets of perspiration and his face showed a distressing pallor, but he nevertheless nodded eagerly. Kismet drew in a breath and exhaled with a defeated sigh. “Well, I suppose it has to lead somewhere. I just hope we don’t run into any of the former tenants.”

  ***

  After a few moments spent gathering and inventorying the remaining supplies, the small party began advancing once more along the tunnel route. Although they progressed in much the same manner as before, Kismet was now more keenly aware of the separation of each member of the party. The space that divided them as they moved was more than simply a physical interval. Alone with his or her thoughts, each person walked silently more than a meter from the next, and Kismet found himself wondering what occupied the minds of his companions.

  Chiron’s obsession with finding the trove, and specifically the Staff of Moses, was most troubling, but at least it was something he could understand. In his own way, Kismet was also searching for the answer to a question that was much bigger than anything he could put into words. He didn’t for a moment believe that the old man would find something definitive—the fingerprint of God, written large in the desert sand—but in a quest for faith, sometimes the search itself was the goal.

  Marie’s motivations were less easy to read. Initially, it had been easy to dismiss her attendance as peripheral, a titillating presence in the right environment, but a deadly distraction in the midst of life and death hardships. Yet, there had been a few moments when her behavior seemed out of character with that impression, not the least example of which was her eagerness to push ahead into the treasure vault. And her simple declaration of interest in discovering what lay at the end of the tunnel bespoke a deeper personal investment in their quest than a simple wish to support her employer.

  Under the pretense of checking his physical condition, Kismet diverted the lantern’s broad cone of light away from the tunnel to briefly illuminate Hussein’s face. The young man’s movements were labored, as was his breathing, and his countenance betrayed the ongoing war his body was fighting against the toxins in his bloodstream, but he flashed a determined smile and managed to straighten his posture.

  Kismet had no reason to doubt that Hussein’s intentions were anything beyond the obvious. The young scholar, like most people his age, was interested in adventure and discovery. In that, they were not so different, though Kismet could remember a time in his own life when subterranean passageways and ancient ruins held no significance for him. In fact, it had not been until that fateful night in the desert that he had begun looking into the mysteries of the past, and even then only as means to solving a more immediate enigma. The depth of his knowledge of history was incidental to a quest rooted solely in the present.

  As he continued to tread the trail of his thoughts, he found Marie at his side. “Nick, a question if you please. You said that anything of religious significance would be destroyed. Is that the goal of the Prom
etheus group? To destroy that which might reinforce religious faith?”

  He tried in vain to read her expression; she floated like a wraith in the darkness beside him. He resisted the urge to play the light on her face as he had Hussein’s. “I don’t know for sure. In any case, that’s not what I meant. There’s reason to believe that Saddam Hussein would have ordered the destruction of certain relics—artifacts from the Temple of Solomon and perhaps even the Staff Pierre is seeking—out of fear that the Israeli government might risk war in order to recover them.”

  “How can you know this?”

  Kismet gave a vague shrug. “It’s not so farfetched. The Taliban government of Afghanistan destroyed several stone carvings of Buddha because they believed it to be the will of God.”

  “But Saddam Hussein has never been devoutly religious. He would view such relics merely as antiquities to be prized or sold.” She took a step forward so that her face was partially bathed in light, her expression stern. “And you did not answer my question. Is this something that Samir Al-Azir told you?”

  He made no attempt to hide his dismay, but lowered his voice in an unspoken plea for her to use discretion. “So you really were eavesdropping. But the answer is yes. That’s what he told me.”

  “And had he been so ordered? I am wondering what he found that could have been so inflammatory.”

  “Marie.” Kismet’s voice took on a forceful edge. “Drop it.”

  “I think I have as much right to know as Pierre,” she continued defiantly, but dropped her tone to a whisper. “And you may be sure that I will demand an explanation when this is finished.”

  Kismet breathed a relieved sigh at her temporary retreat from the subject. Between Chiron’s probing and Marie’s spying, he had inadvertently revealed more about his encounter with Samir Al-Azir than at any other time in his life. He had kept the details of what had happened that night secret with a passion that bordered on mania for the simple reason that he wasn’t really sure who he could trust. His attempts to regulate how much of the tale he would reveal were proving futile. Each revelation led to more questions and to deductions that were startlingly accurate.