Into the Black

by Sean Ellis

  "Because he knows something," replied Kismet gravely. "Something that no one is supposed to know."

  THREE

  From their vantage half a city block away, Kismet and Lyse watched as the driver of the Towne Car let his passenger out. Harcourt stood on the wet sidewalk, briefly taking in the architecture of the West Village, and then turned to face the imposing edifice before which they were parked—a nineteenth century Catholic Church. He conferred with the driver for a moment, and then ascended the steps.

  "What do you make of that?" Lyse whispered, unnecessarily.

  Kismet shook his head. "Let's find out."

  The procession through downtown had ended here in the West Village. The wet snow had grudgingly given way to sporadic drizzle, but visibility in the dark twilight remained limited. The street on which they now found themselves was quiet, almost unnaturally so for New York City, with only a few pedestrians braving the unpleasant weather. Kismet absently wondered if everyone had already gone off to celebrate the New Year. The only sign of any real activity was a large canister style garbage truck slowly rolling up the street making late pick-ups, evidently extending service on the eve of the holiday so that the following day might be spent with football games and hangover remedies.

  Harcourt's driver returned to the black car and drove off, after which Kismet and Lyse approached the front of the church as inconspicuously as possible. Since Harcourt knew his face, Kismet suggested that Lyse take the lead. If the archaeologist happened to be waiting just inside the doors of the church, she could wave him off.

  She took a step back, hands on her hips. "I'm not exactly dressed for church here, Nick."

  "Come on, you look great. It's New Year's Eve. Everyone is dressed up. Even the nuns."

  She shook her head disparagingly, then hopped up the steps to the heavy wooden doors, and peered into the great hall of the church. "No sign of him. In fact, I don't see anyone."

  Kismet nudged her inside, closing the enormous door behind them. The nave was gloomy—more like a crypt than a house of worship. A wall of votive candles flickered nearby, but most were on their last breath. Kismet walked by the votary, pausing at the border of the colonnade to see if the Englishman was secreted in the pews.

  The church seemed deserted. All but one of the confessionals stood wide open and vacant. The pews were likewise empty, as was the area around the altar. A corridor, situated behind the altar, led away from the main auditorium and appeared to be the only means of egress available to Harcourt. Kismet took a cautious step out from behind the column.

  He crossed the distance to the front of the nave quickly, straining to hear some fragment of a voice, or noise of footsteps, alerting him to the approach of trouble. Nothing. The church was as quiet as a tomb.

  "We've missed something," he muttered. "Some other way out of here."

  Lyse jerked a thumb in the direction of the confessional. "Maybe he's in there."

  "I don't think he's Catholic, so confession?" He shook his head dismissively. Nevertheless, he strode toward the stalls and listened for the Englishman's voice just in case. He heard nothing...nothing at all. He moved nearer to the closed door and pressed his ear to the thin panel.

  Lyse cleared her throat. "I'm pretty sure you're not supposed to—"

  He stepped back and pulled the door open. Lyse squealed involuntarily as Kismet, to all appearances, violated the sanctity of the confessional. The little booth however was empty. He stepped inside, and began probing the screen that separated the penitent from the confessor until it popped loose, swinging on hinges into the emptiness beyond.

  "Bless me father for I have sinned," Kismet remarked, observing his handiwork.

  "That ain't very damn funny." Then, as if remembering where she was, Lyse grimaced and, looking heavenward, added: "Oops. Sorry."

  Beyond the hinged screen the similarity to an ordinary confessional ended. The confessor's bench had been pushed aside to reveal a three foot square opening in the floor, its trapdoor covering carelessly thrown aside. Kismet climbed through the partition and knelt beside the aperture. A fixed wooden ladder descended into the darkness below. Kismet raised a finger to his lips, signaling his companion to keep silent then stuck his head into the opening.

  He could hear voices, muted by the distance. No one seemed to be guarding the base of the ladder, but Kismet felt a growing apprehension. After so many fruitless years of searching, had he finally happened upon the sanctuary of the mysterious group that had become the object of his own epic quest? Somehow, secret passages and hidden vaults seemed a little too cliché for the almost faceless enemy he had pursued for almost two decades. Still, there was only one way to find out. Gathering his courage, he lowered his feet onto the first step and began climbing down.

  When he had descended to the point where his entire body was below the opening he paused to look around. The floor was further down than he expected. The room into which he was lowering himself was a vast hall, greater in dimension than the church auditorium above. From floor to ceiling there was easily thirty feet of space, the uppermost third given to a framework of exposed wooden rafters. Three long beams ran the length of the hall, a distance that Kismet had yet to determine, while crossbeams and braces spanned every ten or so feet of its width.

  The floor was bare stone, devoid of any chairs or fixtures, but the rough wood and stone of the walls were adorned with tapestries and banners, many bearing heraldic crests from various European monarchies, most of which were no longer in existence.

  "Well?" prompted Lyse, her voice a stage whisper.

  Kismet looked up through the aperture. "I think there's another old church down here. Or maybe a meeting hall, probably for a Hibernian order."

  "A who?"

  Kismet shook off the inquiry. "Never mind. If you're coming down, try to keep quiet."

  She nodded, then slipped out of her pumps and began her descent. Kismet took another step down; his feet were now level with the rafters. The nearest long beam, the one running down the center, was a little more than three feet away. He reached out to it with his foot, then released his grip on the ladder and transferred his weight onto the outstretched extremity.

  The beam was wide enough to stand on, but he nearly lost his balance as he stepped across. Though both feet were planted, he had to flail his arms until regaining his balance. He remained there for a moment, arms outstretched like a tightrope walker.

  "You've got to be kidding," whispered Lyse.

  "It's not that hard," he lied, grinning. "I'll give you a hand."

  "I'll give you a hand," she muttered, balling her right into a fist and shaking it at him. She nevertheless reached out and gripped the ladder with her left hand. With the mid-thigh length cocktail dress eased up just a little higher in order to facilitate movement, she extended her right foot toward the beam. Her short legs had more difficulty bridging the expanse, but she succeeded, only to find herself in a situation more precarious than she had first imagined. An instant later, Kismet's steadying hand wrapped around her wrist.

  "Slowly," he admonished. "I'll help you over, but if you move too fast, we'll both fall off."

  She nodded. "Here I come."

  He began exerting a steady pull on her arm. Lyse eased forward, shifting her weight onto her extended right foot while lifting her left from the ladder step. Only his grip held her back from a thirty-foot drop. As Kismet drew her toward him, he turned on the beam, trying to compensate for the change in his center of gravity. Sensing that success was imminent, Lyse brought her feet together too quickly, causing him to teeter over empty space. Realizing her error, she tried to adjust, pulling him closer. For a moment, it was as if they were engaged in a ritualistic dance high above the ground. After what seemed an eternity of wobbling and flailing, their equilibrium stabilized. Lyse spied a crossbeam two steps away and released her grip on Kismet's hand. She hastened toward the upright post and desperately wrapped her arms around the angled braces which ran from the ceiling t
o the beam.

  "That wasn't so bad, was it?"

  She threw him a withering glare. "And just how in the hell are we supposed to get off this thing?"

  Kismet ignored her question. "Come on."

  He eased along the broad rail, exhibiting more confidence about his footing than he actually felt. The sound of the voices below grew louder. After traversing three of the crossbeams, he could make out the conversation at the distant end of the hall, and realized that he was the subject of the discussion.

  "How did he react?"

  Harcourt tittered obnoxiously. "I could have knocked him over with a feather."

  "The question is, will he help us?" Kismet did not recognize the voice, but heard the unmistakable tone of authority it commanded. He was close enough to see the group, which meant he might be visible to them. Hunkering down behind a crosspiece, he eased out just far enough to spy on the discussion below.

  There were eight people gathered at the back end of the hall. Four men, dressed and postured like bodyguards, flanked Harcourt and the man to whom he spoke. Three of them wore generic black suits, the conspicuous bulges of shoulder holsters visible beneath their arms. The fourth was too enormous to wear a jacket, but like the others sported a leather holster that wrapped around his shoulder blades. More than six and a half feet tall, with bulging muscles and the battered features of a veteran brawler, his wild eyes were nearly obscured by the mop of curly hair that fell down over his forehead.

  The other two figures in the room were seated in a corner. Kismet could see only their feet, close to the legs of the chairs in which they sat. One was clearly female, with shapely calves extending from the folds of a simple wraparound skirt. From his obscured viewpoint, he could see nothing above the knees, but what he could see of the motionless figures was unsettling.

  "I don't know," Harcourt answered. "He seemed very upset at the speculative nature of our mission. Perhaps you will succeed in persuading him, where I failed."

  The other man sighed and paced around the area, affording Kismet a chance to glimpse him. He was a tall man, perhaps a hand's breadth taller than Kismet himself. A moat of hair encircled a shiny bald pate and continued down the man's cheeks in a bushy, but well-groomed beard. The fellow was on the portly side, but carried himself with a regal posture apropos of his authoritative voice. Kismet noted that his dark suit was of a style that had peaked in popularity near the beginning of the last decade, suggesting that the bald, bearded man had worn his girth proudly for many years.

  "A wasted effort," the man declared. Kismet noted also the soft pronunciation of the consonant 'r', and placed the man in an aristocratic New England background. "I should have gone directly to him myself in the first place. But let us focus our attention elsewhere for the moment."

  "I see that you have visitors," Harcourt observed.

  "Yes. Allow me to introduce Peter Kerns, formerly Petr Chereneyev, a fugitive from Soviet Russia."

  "And the girl?"

  "His daughter." The man's answer was off-hand, as if the second prisoner was of little interest to him. He did not offer her name.

  Harcourt was silent for a long moment. "Is it necessary for them to be tied up like that?"

  "Sir Andrew, I don't think you appreciate the urgency of our situation. I require results, and quickly. I cannot invest my resources in the possibility that Mr. Kerns here will cooperate of his own accord. The measures I have taken will insure that he does."

  "Nick," whispered Lyse at Kismet's shoulder. "You said that this guy Harcourt knew something he wasn't supposed to know, right?"

  Kismet nodded.

  "Was it some kind of government secret?"

  Kismet's brow furrowed. "I guess you could say that. Why?"

  "That guy down there, the fat one. His name is Halverson Grimes; used to be Admiral Halverson Grimes. He was an aviator during Viet Nam; a bona fide war hero."

  Kismet looked down at Grimes. As much as he wanted to believe that he had uncovered the hidden lair of the Prometheus group, there was a more plausible explanation for Harcourt's parting shot. If Grimes' background in the military gave him a high enough security clearance, then conceivably he would have had access to the after action review that had followed Kismet's disastrous mission into Iraq, which included his description of the artifact the defector had shown him. It would have been a simple thing to leak that tidbit of information to Harcourt in order to help him recruit Kismet's assistance. But why did the former Admiral Grimes think that he was essential to the recovery effort? For that matter, why was he interested in something as obscure as an ancient Greek legend?

  "You look up hawk in the dictionary and you'll find his picture," continued Lyse. "He pushed hard for pre-emptive military action against Iran and North Korea, and advocated a more aggressive posture toward Russia and China. You remember all the controversy about torture of inmates at Gitmo? Well, Grimes was doing stuff that even the former administration didn't approve of. He finally became too much of an embarrassment and they canned him. I'm not sure what he's been up to since then."

  "How do you know all this?" Kismet whispered over his shoulder.

  Lyse's face went blank. "Gee, Nick, don't you read the newspapers?"

  He shook his head in amazement. "I thought I did," he murmured, then focused his attention on the conversation below.

  "My investigators," Grimes was saying, "have traced the sale of the artifacts back to Mr. Kerns. It seems that before he left his homeland, Kerns—or should I say Chereneyev—was a prominent petroleum engineer, and a good communist. Then, without warning, he emigrated to the United States, changed his name, and sold a number of ancient Greek antiquities for a great deal of money."

  "You found it, didn't you?" accused Harcourt.

  There was a moment of muffled speech, in which Kismet guessed a prisoner's gag was being removed. Then, a thickly accented voice replied: "Please, don't hurt us. I'll tell you where to look."

  "You'll do more than that Comrade Chereneyev." It was Grimes that spoke, filling his last two words with contempt. "You will direct Sir Andrew to the site where you discovered the artifacts. If you attempt to mislead him, I assure you that the consequences to your daughter will be most grave."

  "Yes, I will show you. Only please do not hurt—" He was silenced once more by the gag.

  "Chereneyev has already given us a starting point," Grimes continued. "I've seen to your travel arrangements."

  The burly guards moved toward the seated captives and loosened the bonds of the male hostage. He was helped to his feet and half-dragged to stand beside Harcourt.

  Kismet leaned back. "Harcourt is about to leave. Get back to the car and follow him. I want to know where he's going next."

  “Nick, I love you, but I didn’t come here to be your errand girl. I need that statue back.”

  Lyse's whisper was growing louder, and Kismet feared she might attract the attention of the men below. He held a finger to his lips, and then took a deep breath. “I think this is important, Lyse. Do this one thing for me, and then we‘ll be square. I’ll text you the name and location of a safe location. You'll get the statue then."

  "I'd better," grumbled Lyse. "What about you?"

  "I'm going to get the girl."

  Lyse flashed a grin. "Don't let little Nick get you in any trouble."

  "You're hilarious."

  Her smile slipped, replaced by something more sincere. "Good luck, Nick. And be careful."

  "You too, Lyse."

  She squeezed his shoulder then turned and deftly darted down the length of the beam. Her touch had triggered an unexpected surge of pleasant memories. Kismet's gaze lingered on her for a long, wistful moment. Shaking his head to clear away the nostalgia, he returned his attention to the scene below.

  Harcourt and Grimes continued to converse, discussing details about the impending expedition, without ever revealing the ultimate destination. "I have a few matters to attend to before I can join you," Grimes said, "foremost of whic
h is to persuade Nick Kismet to lend his assistance in our project."

  "I still fail to understand why you want Kismet along," Harcourt complained. "He's entirely too skeptical."

  "Thank you for your opinion, Sir Andrew," was the caustic reply. "In the future, refrain from offering it until you are asked to do so."

  The group began moving down the length of the hall, passing directly beneath Kismet. He threw a backward glance at Lyse but she had already vanished through the opening. Moments later, Grimes and Harcourt, along with a submissive Kerns and the retinue of guards, stopped beneath the ladder.

  Kismet could no longer hear their conversation, but saw Grimes gesturing to the gigantic man, directing him and another fellow to return to watch over Kerns' daughter. As the two guards wandered back through the hall, Harcourt and the others commenced ascending the ladder. Kismet quickly walked down the long beam until he reached the last of the crosspieces. He tiptoed across the system of braces and perched directly above where Kerns' daughter sat bound and gagged in a chair. Beside her, the slack ropes that had restrained her father lay upon his now vacant seat.

  He could not see much of her, only blonde hair cascading over what appeared to be flawless, pale skin. She did not struggle against her bonds, but it was clear to Kismet that she had not surrendered to the idea of captivity. Her eyes darted warily around the hall, following the movements of the giant and the other guard.

  The two men paused, waiting until the last of Grimes' party had exited through the opening above. Kismet also waited, weighing his options and formulating a plan of attack.

  "Guess what missy," grunted the smaller of the men below Kismet. "As soon as your daddy gets on that plane, me and Rudy get to have some fun with you."

  "Fun," echoed the giant, Rudy. Both men laughed hysterically as if they had reached the very zenith of humor.

  Kismet fished a coin from his pocket and hurled it the length of the hall. There was a metallic clink twenty yards away, then a pinging ricochet from a second beam. A moment later it clattered on the stone floor.