The two parties came together in the lights held by the newcomers.
“Cloe, perhaps some introductions are in order since we may be destined to die together,” said Michael wryly.
“Yes, forgive me,” said Cloe. “You have already met my colleague, Monsignor Albert Roques, and my son J.E. This is Father Sergio Canti, of the Vatican, along with our Swiss Guards.” Cloe’s eyes narrowed a bit as she thought about Michael’s “monsignor” slip when he said good night to her in Tunis.
“I am Miguel, and this is my number one, Tomás, along with my soldiers,” replied Miguel. “We have come for the Karik.”
“The Karik?” asked Cloe, surprised this was not the rescue party Michael had initially suggested. “Why would you be after the Karik? How do you know him?”
“Cloe, this was the cause for my note to you and wanting to talk to you,” said Michael. “I have reason to believe the Karik is implicated in the murder of my wife and children. I have chased him from Lyon to Tunis to here. I knew he was interested in the jars, and I knew you were also searching for them. This is why I was not completely truthful with you in Tunis.”
“I see, Michael,” said Cloe, turning directly to him in the low light. “It seems that my friends and I served as bait in your efforts to trap the Karik. I don’t think I like the implications of that one bit.”
“I’m sorry, Cloe,” he responded. “That was all before I knew you.”
“Be that as it may, this has to be taken up another time,” Cloe whispered with a heavy heart. “We have to get out of here now.” Cloe turned to her son and said, “J.E., what do we do now?”
“Well, at least Miguel and his soldiers are armed,” said J.E. He turned to Miguel and explained, “We lost all our weapons in a plane crash we believe was engineered by the Karik.”
“Yes, I would agree with your assumption that the Karik was behind the sabotage of the airplane,” responded Miguel. “That’s exactly the kind of thing the coward would do.”
At that point, Miguel ordered his men to divide their weapons with Cloe’s group. Some had rifles, and some had pistols, but now all were armed. It was surprising how this gesture improved morale and bonded the two groups together. Food and water was also shared from the packs of Miguel’s people.
“Michael, I don’t know what to say,” said Cloe. “This is quite a gesture of trust.”
“We are indebted to you, sir,” said the monsignor.
“I think we can help each other, assuming we can somehow get out of here,” replied Miguel.
They all sat in the corridor and refreshed themselves. Soon Cloe felt invigorated in spite of the circumstances. At least the Karik had moved on. But to where? Cloe wondered.
“Where is the Karik?” pressed Father Sergio, seemingly plucking the thought from Cloe’s mind.
“Everything he said before he left tells me he is after the Sicarii. He must believe the Sicarii had something to do with the relics not being here,” said Cloe.
“Could the Sicarii have moved them?” queried J.E.
“We can’t know that one way or another for sure,” said the monsignor, “but certainly, the Sicarii is one group with that knowledge and a strong motive to protect the contents of the cave.”
“Are these the relics the Kolektor sought?” asked Miguel.
Cloe was stunned by Miguel’s mention of the Kolektor, and her instincts told her there were other revelations to come. “Michael, you know of the Kolektor?” she asked.
“Cloe, the time for lies and deceit is over. I know of the Kolektor. I know who all of you are, and I know everything about the jars and Hakeldama,” he replied softly.
“If you know all this, you must be here for the relics yourself,” said Cloe, suddenly wary.
“Yes,” said the monsignor, “what do you know of them?”
“I know nothing of the supposed contents of the cave, only that the Kolektor coveted them,” responded Miguel. “That … and now the Karik pursues them. I’m the only one in this group who is not interested in the cave or the jars. I want the Karik.”
“Yet here you are,” said J.E. “Miguel, or whatever you call yourself, your actions give lie to your words. If you don’t care about the relics, why are you here?”
Cloe saw that the tension was growing between the two groups. Nothing made sense. Men fingered weapons.
“Wait,” Cloe yelled. “If you don’t know anything about the relics and don’t seek them, how did you even know they existed, and why would you care? Who told you about them?”
Michael looked at her and said, “My father told me about the relics and the cave.”
CHAPTER 61
“Your father?” queried Cloe. She had no idea what was going on. Was his father someone from Thib’s outfit from the El Guettar campaign? Thib had never mentioned someone else. Somehow, with Bobby Morrow dead, Cloe had believed Thib had never told anyone else about the cave.
“Was your father at El Guettar?” she asked.
“No, Cloe, you are on the wrong track completely,” said Michael. “My father was not a soldier with your father. He was not a religious who knew what the monsignor’s people know.”
“Well, who the hell was he?” questioned J.E.
“His father was the Kolektor,” said the monsignor. “Miguel is the son of the Kolektor, the man who tried to crucify us all at Hakeldama.”
“No, no, nooo!” cried Cloe. “That can’t be right. Michael … tell him.”
All eyes were now on Miguel. Time passed as he considered his answer. Meanwhile, Cloe’s heart sank, weighed down by the truth.
“How did you know, Albert, if I may call you that?” Miguel asked.
“Whether we are all going to be chums on a first-name basis remains to be seen,” asserted J.E., a little defensively.
“I understand,” said Miguel. “But I do wish for your friendship, and please call me Miguel, or Michael if you prefer.” He turned back to the priest.
“I didn’t know for sure,” replied the monsignor, “but you eliminated most of the possibilities. If you didn’t come to the knowledge of the cave through Thib, the Church, or us, that left only the Sicarii and the Kolektor. Years ago it was rumored he had a son, but it was said the child died as a youth.”
Miguel nodded. “The man known as the Kolektor was my biological father. However, I never actually knew him. As a child, apparently for my own protection, I was sent off to South America, and all records of my existence vanished.”
“So you were that child in the rumors,” mused the monsignor.
“Yes, I grew up in Rio under a different name with Brazilian citizenship,” he continued. “The family who raised me treated me as one of their own, but the Kolektor paid all the bills. After I had not seen or heard anything of him for close to thirty years, I began to think the Kolektor had died. My retainers looked into it after I matured and became a businessman, but they found nothing but dead ends. Eventually, I stopped thinking about it at all.”
“I gather something happened to change all that,” ventured Cloe.
“Yes,” replied Miguel, pausing and seeming to struggle with the next part of the story. “One day out of the clear blue sky, I was in my office, and my personal cell rang. Very few people have that number. Cloe, I believe you are familiar with his voice.”
Cloe shivered at the memory of the Kolektor’s voice on the phone after he had taken Uncle Sonny. “I am,” she said. “We all are.”
“Then you can understand the shock I felt with the past reaching out to me like that,” said Miguel. “There was no explanation for the thirty-year hiatus. He told me something had been discovered that might change the world. I don’t know if he thought his search for the jar would interest me or might endanger me. But he told me what he knew and in a series of calls kept me abreast of the search. In retrospect, I know now he omitted a few details, mainly his murderous methodology and the kidnapping of your poor uncle.”
“My God,” said Cloe.
“I can only say how sorry I am that you have gone through such a terrible experience at the hands of a member of my family,” said Michael.
“When did you talk to the Kolektor the last time?” asked J.E.
“On the night of Hakeldama,” replied Miguel. “He said you had decided to share your work with him because of his expertise and resources. He told me everything he had learned from Dr. Lejeune.”
“What did he hope to accomplish?” asked the monsignor. “Why did he contact you and tell you all this?”
“I cannot say,” responded Miguel. “I had my life and family, and his passions were not my passions.”
“Do you think this was his way of trying to make up to you for the lost years?” asked J.E.
“No, he had no such feelings as far as I could tell,” said Miguel. “This was not about me at all. This was about his legacy.”
“That makes all the sense in the world, considering who the Kolektor was,” said Cloe. “The discovery of the jars and the journal was enormous. It might have changed everything, even to the point of bringing down the Catholic Church. Maybe this was something he just needed to be able to pass on to someone.”
Cloe considered what she had just heard. Michael’s phone call from the Kolektor after so many years was not unlike the call she had received from Uncle Sonny when Thib was murdered. There was a certain symmetry here that she could not deny. Michael seemed to be as much a victim of circumstances as she was.
“Michael, Miguel, or whatever your name is, I’ll ask you one final time. Are you here for the cave? What do you want?” asked J.E.
“No, I couldn’t care less about the cave. That was my father’s passion. It is not mine,” responded Miguel. “I don’t really even know what he thought he would find. To me the cave is the location where I might find my real quarry, the Karik.”
“To be clear, Michael, you have no interest in the cave or the jars?” pressed Cloe.
“No, the Karik killed my family,” said Michael softly. “I have come to kill him.”
CHAPTER 62
“You seek only revenge,” said the monsignor sadly.
“No, I want justice!” replied Miguel heatedly. “The Karik is beyond the justice of any state. But he is not beyond my justice. It’s very simple. He caused the deaths of my wife and my boys. He will die for that.”
Cloe studied Michael carefully, but she could see no deceit in his words. He felt and meant what he said. She had known in her brief encounter with him that he had a mystery about him. Now, she knew it was an irretrievable sadness. Her long-lost mother and father came to her mind.
Just then a muffled cracking like the snapping of stone vertebrae reached them, followed quickly by another wave of debris and sand.
“What’s that?” asked Father Sergio. “It seems to have come from the front of the cavern where the marabout was located.”
“I’m not sure,” said the monsignor, “but judging from that sound, the stone structure of the whole system of caves may have been compromised. The huge explosion set off by the Karik to destroy the marabout and to bury us may have damaged the roof of the large cavern we first entered from the trap door. If so, that cracking may foreshadow the collapse of the roof and walls. This whole thing could come down on top of us.”
“We have to get out of here,” Cloe said.
“But how?” asked Father Sergio. “The Karik blew up the only exit.”
Cloe heard the crashing thud of what she took to be the roof and walls of the large cavern as it surrendered to the weight of the cascading forces created by the Karik. Again dirt and debris blew over them. Cloe could hardly breathe.
“Use the handkerchief,” yelled the monsignor.
“Albert, do you have any ideas?” cried Cloe. “I can barely see anything in this dust.”
“Back … back into the area where Thib found the jar!” shouted the monsignor.
They grabbed what little they had and ran for their lives. Cloe put the handkerchief over her nose and mouth, but she could see little ahead of her.
They all arrived at the chamber where Thib had found the jar, but Cloe could hear the sequential failings of the cavern structures behind them. Soon, this part of the cave would also fail, and they would die under tons of rock.
“Cloe, here!” called the monsignor.
Cloe and the others ran to him in the corner of what she now thought of as Thib’s room in the underground cavern. The calamitous collapse of the large cavern had put unbearable weight on the supporting walls and roofs of the smaller caves, causing each to fail in turn. It was as if a murderous line of million-ton stone dominoes had been tipped, and they were all rushing to fall on Cloe and her companions. Each time a closer cave failed, more and more dust and debris washed over them.
“Albert, what do we do?” cried Cloe.
The monsignor grabbed her, cupped his hand over her ear, and yelled into the rising crescendo, “This must be the place! That pile of debris over there has to be it.”
“Yes,” she screamed back. “This is Thib’s chamber. We’re going to die here!”
At that point the monsignor grabbed a shovel from the backpack of one of Miguel’s men and scrambled up the pile of debris. Cloe watched as he began to vigorously dig into the ceiling. He’s lost his mind! she thought.
Just then, J.E. ran by her with a shovel in his hand. He too attacked the ceiling above the heap of debris. The crashing cave-ins of the stone ceilings and walls of the chambers behind them were much closer now, perhaps only a cave or two away. Whatever was going to happen to them would be decided in seconds.
Cloe squinted at her son and the monsignor through the dirt and dust, realized what was happening, and turned to the others. “After them!” she screamed. “It must be where my father fell in. Dig with whatever you have. For God’s sake, dig with your bare hands if you have to! It’s the only way out!”
Cloe, Miguel, Father Sergio, and the Swiss ran up the rock pile like so many steps, and all attacked the roof of the chamber, some with rough tools but others with their hands. Tomás and the others dispersed the dirt and debris.
With a great blast, the chamber next to them succumbed to the destruction. They had to be right and fast, or they would die. There would be no do-overs. The walls around them began to shake like the vibrating floor of an old fun house in a carnival midway. They were coming down.
It’s over, thought Cloe. Just then a strong arm enclosed her in a protective embrace. J.E.? But when Cloe turned, it was Michael.
“Here!” screamed the monsignor against the cacophony.
Cloe looked but could see nothing. Suddenly the monsignor disappeared. One second he was standing on the top of the debris stack, and the next he was gone. Michael half-pushed and half-carried her to where the monsignor had been.
“My God, it’s a hole!” she cried as Michael handed her up to the monsignor.
In the starlight, Cloe could see she was in a low swale between two sand berms.
The monsignor yelled, “Run!” And Cloe ran like her life depended on it.
As she looked back over her shoulder, she saw several men catapult out of the cavity by the strength of the men below. It was obvious that there was a team working below to propel the ones yet to be saved out of danger. They all gathered with Cloe at her place of relative safety.
From the top of the berm where she had sought refuge, she turned and saw the monsignor reach down and grab Father Sergio’s hands and haul him out of death’s maw like a rag doll. The earth around the hole was collapsing, and geysers of dust were erupting from the sand around them. How many more could they save?
“J.E.!” Cloe screamed. Father Sergio stood his ground, and the two clerics grabbed the next pair of hands to fill the hole and yanked the person out. When Cloe saw it was J.E., she cried.
The monsignor yelled for the camerlengo to run, and he did. J.E. and the monsignor then pulled Miguel out of harm’s way, and he ran toward Cloe. Now the portal itself had begun to settle as
the cave below filled in. The monsignor and J.E. were instantly up to their knees in sand and sinking. They were on the edge of being sucked down.
Cloe knew they would not give up as long as there was anyone to be saved. She thought again about how much she loved these men. They might die trying, but they would save everyone they could. As the ceiling of the cave began its final collapse, one last pair of hands appeared in the hole. J.E. and the monsignor grabbed them and tugged for all they were worth, but they could not pull the man free. Michael and Father Sergio jumped up from their positions of safety and slid down the back of the berm into the sinkhole. All four of the men pulled until the man, one of the Swiss, was free. J.E. hoisted the exhausted man to his shoulder, and all ran for safety, as the sounds of the catastrophic final failure of the cavern behind them filled the air.
Cloe lay worn out on top of the berm. The settling had finally stopped, and everything was eerily silent. From the crashing and the exploding of rock pounding upon rock, now there was nothing, no sound.
Just as quickly as everything had become silent and stable, all the men jumped up, ran to the cave-in site, and began to dig, one or two with shovels and the rest with their hands.
J.E. looked up at Cloe with tears in his eyes and yelled, “We left men behind.”
CHAPTER 63
Cloe looked down at the exhausted men still digging in the sinkhole. She knew it had been a long time. She was ashamed to admit she might have dozed a bit, as dog-tired as she had been. The excavation had spread out 360 degrees from the site of the original hole.
“J.E.,” she called, “have you found anything?”
Her son looked up at her, clearly worn out, and said, “Mom, we can’t even find the rock slide where we climbed out. They’re all lost.”
J.E.’s face was lined with worry, and he looked like he had aged while she slept. He was truly beaten, Cloe thought. She had never seen him succumb like this, not even under the clutches of the Kolektor or in the plane crash. Here, her son had lost men under his command, and he felt guilty for having allowed himself to be pulled out before them. But he and the monsignor had saved many who otherwise would have died. On the very site where Thib had lost a soldier in his charge, Bobby Morrow, J.E. had lost warriors he had led. She wondered if this would forever scar J.E. as it had Thib. Finally, the exhausted diggers slowly began to leave the excavation area and to climb the berm to her position.
The Last Sicarius Page 18