After a few minutes, the men descended the other side. Shortly after that, Brancati came over to Sebastian.
“Father, do you think you can make it up that rock?”
Sebastian was surprised by the question. Brancati had taken pains to make certain he was kept out of harm’s way.
“I think I can manage,” the priest replied.
“We’ll help you. It’s important that you see what’s in that cave.”
“What is it?”
Brancati’s expression was solemn. His voice was low when he spoke. “They think it’s a graveyard.”
The announcement sent a chill through Sebastian. It wouldn’t be a graveyard in the traditional sense. While traveling with his father as a young man, Sebastian had been present when such discoveries were made. Simple men were always humbled.
And frightened.
“Let’s go,” Sebastian said. And he started forward. But his mind whirled with the implications. Were they about to see Atlanteans for the first time?
CHAPTER
16
CAVE #42
ATLANTIS BURIAL CATACOMBS
CÁDIZ, SPAIN
SEPTEMBER 4, 2009
T
he long climb robbed Father Sebastian of his breath and reminded him that he wasn’t as young as he remembered. Despite the daily constitutionals he took, he too often found himself in library stacks rather than at dig sites during the course of his working days. Reading was not the most aerobic of activities. But he still managed the task. He made it all the way up the sloping pile of broken stone and debris, even if he didn’t do it quite so quickly as his younger colleagues.
The halogen light one of the men raked across the interior of the next cave lit up the catacombs. The cave had been carved from solid rock and hollowed out to make room for the dead. Aisles wove through the walls that stood floor to ceiling like huge bookcases and reminded Sebastian of an old coil radiator.
“Looks like an apartment village of the dead,” one of the construction workers said quietly.
The wreckage and the debris had been spread on the other side of the opening as well. Rocks had tumbled down between the walls of graves.
Atlantis.
The word whirled through Sebastian’s brain. Atlantis was the most fabled of all lost worlds. And it seemed to him that at least a piece of its storied past was spread out before him. It was a truism in both his fields of expertise that the soul of a culture revealed itself in the way it treated the dead.
Sebastian turned so quickly, he almost fell on a loose rock. One of the Swiss Guards reached out reflexively to steady him.
“I need to get down there,” Sebastian said. “I need to see. Help me.”
“Father,” one of the Guards said softly, “the way doesn’t look safe.”
“I’m afraid we can’t allow you down there,” one of the construction men said. “The boss told us we could bring you this far, but that’s it.”
“Then I need to speak to Brancati,” Sebastian said to the nearest construction worker. “May I borrow your radio?”
“Mr. Brancati’s a stubborn man,” the worker said. “But you’re welcome to try.”
After the man showed Sebastian how to use the radio, the priest keyed the microphone. “Mr. Brancati? Dario?”
“Yes, Father,” Brancati replied.
Sebastian stared into the darkness that swathed the final resting places of the people who had once made the city above them teem with life. His conservative estimate was that there must be at least a thousand bodies within the crypt.
“I need to go down there,” Sebastian said.
“Wait,” Brancati said. “Let my team make sure everything’s safe.”
“Just for a short visit.” Sebastian knew a pleading note had entered his voice, and it embarrassed him.
“I don’t want you to get hurt.”
“I did not believe our excavation would play out this way,” Sebastian admitted. “I feel like the men who unearthed King Tut. I need to see what we’ve discovered.”
“You should remember what happened to those men. Couldn’t you wait till—?”
Sebastian interrupted. “Dario, I’m going to be on the phone with the pope in a few minutes. We already know we have leaks within the crew. We’re not going to be able to keep this secret. I don’t want to tell the pope we don’t yet know what we have. Do you?”
Brancati was silent for a moment. “All right, Father. But be careful. Down and up, and you’re out of there.”
“Of course.” Sebastian handed the radio back to the construction worker. “You heard?”
The man nodded but didn’t look particularly happy about the situation.
“You can either lead or follow me,” Sebastian said.
“I’ll lead, Father,” the young man said. “But you have to do what I say. I want both of us to stay safe.”
Sebastian nodded and prepared to follow.
RADISSON SAS HOTEL LEIPZIG
LEIPZIG, GERMANY
SEPTEMBER 4, 2009
Natasha took command of the situation at once. With Gallardo and his people just outside the door, there was no time to lose.
“Call Gary,” she directed, and hoped that the young man wasn’t already a casualty. “Tell him to get out of his room. Tell him to take the nearest stairwell.” She swept her T-shirt off and revealed her nudity beneath. Although Lourds and Leslie both stared at her, she ignored them. She wasn’t modest about her body. “Do it!”
Lourds reacted first and crossed to the room’s telephone.
“Let’s hope they go for your room first, Professor. It’s what I would do. And it will buy us time.” Natasha kept her pistol in hand as she located her jeans and pulled them on without benefit of panties. “Leslie, call the front desk and ask for security. Tell them someone is trying to break into your room. You’re next door to Lourds.”
Lourds talked quickly, but Natasha felt his eyes on her as she pulled on a light knit top. If they hadn’t been in fear for their lives, she might have felt a little smug about that. She noticed that Leslie was definitely aware of where Lourds’s attention was.
Unfortunately her jealousy might get them all killed. Leslie was still standing there, not following commands.
“Move it!” Natasha said.
Shocked into action, Leslie used her cell phone to call the desk. She was asking for security while Natasha found a pair of tennis shoes and pulled them on.
Natasha abandoned the rest of her wardrobe. She took a fanny pack from her suitcase that contained extra magazines for her pistol—bought from a local black market dealer the day they’d arrived in Leipzig—and strapped it around her waist.
Lourds put the phone down. “Gary is going to meet us at the lobby.”
“Security’s on the way,” Leslie said.
Tension rattled through Natasha’s stomach. It would have been better if she hadn’t been the only one here with security experience and wasn’t the only one with a weapon.
“We’ll go now,” Natasha said. “Once we’re through the door, head for the stairwell at the other end of the hallway. Move fast but don’t run. We don’t want to call attention to ourselves. And don’t go to the elevator.”
“It’s seven flights of stairs,” Leslie said.
“You wish to be a target to save a few steps, it is fine by me.” Natasha shrugged. The woman’s plan suited her just fine in her present mood. “You go for the elevator. You can decoy them. Try not to get killed too quickly.”
Leslie was shocked into silence by the blunt words.
Lourds reached out and took Leslie’s hand. “No elevators. We’ll go to the stairwell.”
“All right, then,” Natasha said.
A knock sounded against the door.
Cursing, not even thinking about looking through the peephole in case Gallardo’s men chose to shoot first and verify identities later, Natasha flung the door open and swung it wide. The move caught the two men outside flatfooted. The
y had their hands on their weapons beneath their jackets but hadn’t yet drawn them.
She aimed her pistol at the lead man’s face but knew the man behind him could see it as well. “Touch your weapons and you die,” she said in English, hoping that they spoke the language. “Get your hands up.”
She wasn’t certain if it was English the men understood or the blank, naked threat of the pistol. Either way, they lifted their hands.
“Inside. Quickly.” Natasha wiggled the gun to lead the way. She plucked their ear/throat headsets from their heads, then had Lourds search them and take their pistols. Both of them were silenced.
The men scowled.
“Down on your knees. Cross your ankles. Hands behind your head,” Natasha ordered as she took the pistols one at a time from Lourds. She shoved her own at the back of her waistband, then held one of the thug’s silenced pistols pointed at them. It would be justice if they were killed with their own weapons, she thought.
Neither of them moved.
“Okay, we try this again,” Natasha said. “And I’m going to shoot any of you that don’t speak English.”
Lourds rattled off something in Italian. The men quickly got into position.
Okay, Natasha thought, perhaps they really don’t speak English.
At the end of the hall, Natasha heard a door break. They were running out of time.
“Let’s go.” Natasha opened the door again and motioned for the others to precede her. She kept her gun trained on their captives.
“I will shoot the first one of you who comes out of this door,” she said, and hoped they understood her intent, if not her words.
Then she stepped out into the hall and followed the rest of the crew to the stairwell. She kept one of the silenced pistols out of sight along her leg, and kept her eyes on the door they’d just exited. The men they’d left in her room weren’t going to stay there long. She knew that. Less than six steps into their escape, she heard the door open behind her.
“Gallardo!” one of them yelled.
Natasha brought the silenced pistol up. She fired two rounds. Both of them struck the door within the inches of the man’s face.
He ducked back inside the room as the low-velocity bullets failed to penetrate the door. But the damage had already been done.
Even though the rounds were silenced, Gallardo heard her.
At the other end of the hall, Gallardo and his men stood in front of Lourds’s door. Gallardo turned at the sound of the coughing noises the pistol made and the slaps of the bullets against the door.
By that time Lourds had reached the stairwell door. He opened it and went through.
Natasha took advantage of the cover provided by the stairwell door to get off enough shots to make them duck. “Go!” she shouted over her shoulder. “I will hold them back.”
Lourds hesitated.
“Go!” Natasha ordered, then ducked herself as bullets struck the wall and the door.
Leslie pulled Lourds into motion and they started down the steps.
Pressed against the doorframe, Natasha waited a moment, then whirled around. She tried to keep herself calm and collected, but it was hard. Even when she and Chernovsky were on the streets, she hadn’t faced these kinds of odds in a gunfight. There were occasional instances where they chased a team of criminals, but usually they sought only one man. Never more than three. She’d counted at least five in the hallway.
She sighted on the man closest to the hallway door and fired at his center mass. He was twenty feet out and running hard. She fired her captured pistol dry and saw the slide lock back.
The man she’d shot stumbled and fell headlong into the floor. He twitched and spasmed. The other men in the hallway flattened in doorway. A hail of gunfire drummed the door.
Natasha dodged back inside the door and tossed the empty pistol away. She drew the other silenced one she’d seized and flipped the safety off. Studying the door, she saw that none of the bullets had penetrated the metal shell. Her enemies’ low-velocity silenced rounds had less power than her primary weapon had.
Every nerve in her body screamed at her to run. Instead she reached overhead and raked the pistol’s long silencer through the fluorescent lights. Glass rained down as the tubes exploded and the stairwell landing dimmed. With lights above and below, the area didn’t go completely dark.
She forced herself to squat down in the corner by the stairwell. Far below, she heard Lourds and Leslie running. Their footsteps echoed in the stairwell. They seemed to be making good time.
The stairwell door opened cautiously. Natasha held the pistol steady.
Come on, she thought. She didn’t like ambushing anyone, but when it came down to her survival and the completion of her sister’s goals, she wasn’t going to hesitate.
She owed Gallardo and his men for Yuliya. There was no mercy in her as she waited.
A man looked around the door. She shot him between the eyes. She was in full flight before his body hit the ground. Seeing the dead man in the doorway would hopefully give the others pause before they followed.
She ran as if her life depended on it—it probably did.
Five floors down, Natasha caught up with Lourds and Leslie. Lourds was leading the way and struggling to keep Leslie on her feet. That surprised Natasha. She’d expected the professor to be struggling, not Leslie. He was in much better shape than she’d thought. And Leslie was crumpling under the pressure. Or was it that simple?
Lourds opened the lobby door and moved to step through.
“Wait,” Natasha said. She ran up next to the professor. Listening to Leslie gasping for air left her secretly pleased, and she was surprised she could still be that vindictive while running for her life.
Hiding the pistol behind her back, Natasha peered out into the lobby. She couldn’t see the front desk from her position, but she could spy no one waiting for them.
“We’ll leave the car and take a cab,” Natasha told Lourds and Leslie. “In case Gallardo has managed to hack the hotel’s database and get information on us, he won’t be able to trace us by the license plate.”
Lourds nodded.
“Go,” Natasha said. “I’ll cover you.”
Around the next corner, two men in suits held pistols out.
“Hotel security!” one of the men said in German. “Put the weapon down!”
CAVE #42
ATLANTIS BURIAL CATACOMBS
CÁDIZ, SPAIN
SEPTEMBER 4, 2009
Once Sebastian was through climbing the initial barrier of rocks and debris, the going got much easier. He trembled with excitement and terror as he stepped among the graves. If this place was truly what it was supposed to be, he had cause to be cautious.
The two Swiss Guards stayed at his side. They carried flashlights as well.
Drawn by the eerie sight of the dead lying in their simple graves, Sebastian knelt before the nearest stack of them and gazed into the hollow spot. The hole had been hand-carved. Rather than being merely hacked into place, though, the corners of the niche were rounded off and the measurements were equal. It was a carefully prepared receptacle for the remains and artifacts that occupied it.
All the graves showed the same care and skill.
Sebastian gazed at the body that lay there. Judging from the bones, it was a man. The girth of the pelvic bones revealed that. They poked against the shroud. Using his arm from fingertip to elbow, Sebastian judged that the man had been nearly six feet in height, quite tall for the presumed period of the burial. The formation of the skull and features looked normal. No bone binding or alterations in dentition or other ceremonial changes to the human form he’d seen in his countless digs across the world.
He shone his flashlight over the remnants of the shroud. He wanted to tear it off and see what lay beneath, but he knew he couldn’t. Before anything was done in the burial vault, everything had to be digitally recorded, then measured, and then cataloged as the examinations took place.
But he could
see bits and pieces through the holes in the shroud. The man had worn a gray or black or dark blue robe. It was hard to judge the color after so long. The teeth looked like they had been in very good condition at the time of his death. That was odd because most humans who had lived to adulthood that long ago displayed dental issues. Tribes that had eaten millet and other coarse grains usually showed wear and tear to the teeth from the constant grinding it took to process their food. Tribes that ground their grains also showed wear and tear—the stones used to process the grains left grit in the flours, and that wore away at the dental enamel almost as much as eating unground grains. This man had teeth a modern actor would have been proud to display.
Metal gleamed at the dead man’s neck under his crossed hands.
Leaning into the burial crypt a little more, Sebastian used a pencil from his pocket to gently shift the shroud to reveal the prize beneath. It belonged to a necklace made of white gold or silver.
The pendant was in the shape of a man with his right hand offered in friendship. He carried a book in his left hand.
“Oh, God,” Sebastian said as recognition of the image seared through his mind. “Forgive us. Forgive what we have done to You and Your Son.”
It was true. All of it.
And if this was true, then the story of the Secret Texts had to be true as well.
Sebastian reached for the necklace with a shaking hand. He touched the metal and felt a small electric shock at contact, but he didn’t know if the sensation was real or imagined.
The skeleton’s arm leaped up and brushed his as if trying to grab it.
Sebastian cried out in fear and jerked back. The back of his head slammed against the crypt and nearly knocked him out. The pain left him dazed as he sat heavily on his posterior.
In the next instant, the skeleton leaped from the alcove and fell against his legs.
The Atlantis Code Page 24