The Florentine Deception

by Carey Nachenberg

  About thirty feet up I paused for a breather, dangled from the Jumars, and panned my beam over the rock’s mottled face. “Under better circumstances, this would have been a killer route,” I yelled. I waited for a response, but got none.

  “Linda?” I yelled. “Did you hear me?”

  “…the hell?” her voice echoed down.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “What the hell?” screamed Linda. I jolted my head back, tried to see above the ledge but they were too far from the edge.

  “What’s going on?” I asked. “Is everything okay?”

  I waited a beat.

  No reply.

  Fighting the fatigue, I began double-timing up the rope. Then I saw her. Linda backed up between the two stalagmites, and her hand concealed behind her back, began furtively waving me away.

  “I don’t know,” Her voice trailed off, then, “talking about. I’m telling you.” Her hand signaled again. Something was very wrong.

  I looked down, my heart hammering, trying to figure out what to do. I was thirty-five, maybe forty feet above the ground and locked to the rope. Pistol buried deep inside my pack. As good as dead, a sitting duck. Noiselessly, I unclipped my harness from the ascending gear, careful to maintain my grip on the pair of aluminum Jumars still locked to the rope. Now totally untethered, I could wrap my legs around the rope and lower myself down, hand under hand. If I could just reach the bottom, I could hide behind …

  “You can stop now, Mr. Fife.”

  I looked up, stunned, both hands still clutching the Jumars.

  Khalimmy leaned over the edge, a gray steel gun gripped tightly in his right hand, a Maglite aimed at my torso in his left. Potter stood next to Linda between the two towering stalagmites that anchored the rope.

  “Please stop, Mr. Fife, or I’ll have to shoot one of your friends.” He turned momentarily. “Both of you, turn your lamps off and throw them here.” He gestured at his feet. Both complied. “And you, Mr. Fife. Drop your lamp.” I removed my headlamp and dropped it as instructed. Its light disappeared a second later with a crack, leaving the room totally dark save for the beam from Khalimmy’s lone Maglite.

  “How?” I stammered. “How could you possibly…”

  “We simply followed you here.” He paused to scan the room. “And I must say, this remote location does simplify things greatly. Now, Alex, I’m going to ask you a question, and I need an honest answer. If you give me an honest answer, no one will get hurt. Otherwise, I will shoot your friends.”

  I swallowed hard and felt a drop of sweat run down my right temple.

  “Just tell me what you want. I’ll give it to you.”

  “Thank you,” he said mildly. “Now I need you to tell me the password for the video.”

  I thought for a moment: video … password … What password?

  “Do you mean for the Florentine video?”

  “Yes.”

  “But there wasn’t any password. It wasn’t password-protected.”

  “Come now, Alex, you don’t take me for a fool, do you?” He raised the gun a few degrees toward Potter.

  “I don’t know what you mean. The video wasn’t password-protected. Let me come up and I’ll just give you the damn thumb drive. Please.”

  “I have the video—you graciously left it out for me on your counter,” he raised his gun farther, pointing it at Potter’s face, “but what I need is the password.”

  “I just …” I stammered, “I don’t have any password. There wasn’t any password on the video.”

  Khalimmy’s muzzle flashed and before the event registered in my brain, Potter’s body flew past me. Below, I heard the sickening crunch of bone impacting rock. No screams, no whimpers, just stillness.

  “What the fuck did you do?” I screamed, “What the fuck?” Linda sank to her knees and began sobbing.

  “Alex, I don’t want to have to ask you again. I don’t want to have to kill either of you, but I need the password.” Khalimmy walked up to Linda and pointed the muzzle at her forehead. “You have three seconds.”

  “Three.”

  “Two.”

  “Wait!” I yelled. “Stop! I’ll tell you.”

  Khalimmy withdrew the gun an inch. “Yes?”

  “The password is 3729724, three-seven-two-nine-seven-two-four,” I screamed, rattling off my childhood phone number.

  Khalimmy took a step back from Linda and stared at me contemplatively.

  “Now, Alex, there are two possibilities. One is that you’re lying to me to save yourself. The other is that you’ve finally come to your senses.” He scratched his grizzled chin with the tip of his gun. “The problem is that I can’t tell which is which. So I think I’m going to have to turn the screws just a little tighter and make sure you’re not lying to me.”

  “I told you the password. Please, just go, leave us.”

  “Not quite yet, Alex.” Khalimmy lowered the gun and fired. Linda’s body spasmed.

  “Fuck!” I screamed, spittle shooting from my mouth. “Why? What did she do to you? I told you the fucking password.”

  “It was just a kneecap,” said Khalimmy, “now I’m going to ask you one more time. Tell me the correct password or I’ll just kill both of you right now.”

  “I told you, it’s 3729724, I swear to God.”

  Khalimmy lowered the gun to Linda’s head, which bobbed lightly as she sobbed.

  “What more can I do to convince you?”

  “Are you sure, Alex? Because I will put a bullet into her head if you’re lying.”

  “3729724,” I sobbed, “3729724!”

  “Well, I have to say, I believe you, Alex. At first I doubted, but now I believe you. Thank you, Alex.” Khalimmy raised the gun from Linda’s head and aimed it at my chest. “But even given your cooperation, there is no way I can afford to let either—”

  Linda threw her shoulder sideways into Khalimmy’s leg, sending him staggering backward into the darkness.

  “Go!” she screamed, “jump!” Khalimmy cursed, then fired again—this shot purposeful and deadly. Linda’s silhouetted figure slumped to the ground.

  “God help me,” I murmured. I closed my eyes, released both hands from the Jumars and launched backward.

  Chapter 47

  My muscles tensed in anticipation of the impact, of the jarring crunch of bone, but as the heels of my feet connected, it was with water, not rock. My body plunged deep into the inky pool until its liquid surged into my wide-open mouth and down my windpipe. Choking, I thrashed for the surface, my lungs begging to evacuate the asphyxiating fluid, the need so primal it overrode any fear of Khalimmy or his bullets. But my body refused to rise. The weight of my pack was dragging me down. I wriggled from the shoulder straps, jettisoning the pack into the void, and kicked upward. As my head breached the surface, a bullet whistled by my ear and into the water.

  My mind willed me to dive back under as another bullet slammed into the water centimeters from my face, but my lungs revolted. A third bullet punctured the water’s surface somewhere behind me mid-cough, then another torpedoed through the water, grazing my arm painfully. Amidst my violent coughing, I somehow managed to tread toward the edge of the pool, and just as a final shot ricocheted off the volcanic rock, I climbed from the water and staggered toward the safety of the overhanging wall. Khalimmy cursed from above and swept his beam along the bowl’s pocked edges for a target.

  Leaning against the wall, I grabbed my chest and heaved, then finally took a full breath. I coughed, ejecting the final vestiges of water from my lungs, then inhaled again. Khalimmy’s beam zagged closer to the wall and scanned right. I edged left, toward the cover of a dense colony of stalagmites just beyond the edge of the bowl, my body in the shadows, pressed hard against the cliff face.

  Khalimmy’s beam passed behind me and left. Reaching the edge of the wall, I waited until the beam reversed its course, then spun and dove into the thicket of rocks. Khalimmy screamed and sent a pair of slugs ricocheting off the towering rocks
.

  “Fuck you!” I spat. “You’re going to fry.”

  “Hardly.” His footfalls echoed off the cave walls. “But I can’t say the same for you.” I peered from behind a stalagmite. Khalimmy had rested his gun and flashlight on a boulder and was now rapidly retracting the rope.

  “Thank you for the password, Mr. Fife,” he said, as the tail of the rope cleared the overhang and disappeared. “I’m afraid I won’t have the satisfaction of seeing you die myself, but I’ll revel in the knowledge that you’ll soon suffer a painful death from hunger or thirst. Good enough.”

  The sound of Khalimmy’s footsteps receded, as did his flashlight’s illumination, until finally the cavern settled into complete darkness and stillness.

  I crouched behind the rock formation and tried to calm down, tried to put my situation into perspective but my brain refused to focus. I closed my eyes and zoned out, breathed in deeply, then out, in and out for five minutes. Slowly, my heart rate moderated and I remembered that I’d been shot. I carefully touched the wound on my left arm. My finger came away slick, but the wound was shallow, just a skin abrasion.

  “Potter?” I spoke softly, fearful Khalimmy might still be hiding up above. No response, no movement. I stepped from behind the stalagmites and yelled this time. “Potter?” Again, no response. “Linda?” I waited, then shouted her name again.

  “What a fucking mess!” I screamed. “What a motherfucking mess!”

  Slowly, sweeping my hands for obstacles, I made my way over to the wall. Given the total lack of light, gear, water, and food, Steven, if he were still alive, was my only chance for survival. I leaned back against the wall and sank to the floor.

  Over the next half hour, I called out for Steven every few minutes, hoping that he’d somehow evaded Khalimmy and come to find me, but each passing minute of silence brought more despondence. I rose to stretch my legs and relieve the growing ache in my lower back. What could I do? What were my options? My backpack and all its gear were a lost cause, waterlogged and submerged beyond my reach, my headlamp God knows where, Potter’s and Linda’s packs—and their spare headlamps—sixty vertical feet of advanced climbing above me. If I had a headlamp I might be able to make it up, but given the utter lack of light, it was suicide. I sank back down to the cave’s floor and my mind wandered. Hours passed. Steven wasn’t coming.

  “Why did Khalimmy need a password for the video?” I asked myself. I wasn’t sure—my memory of the preceding hour and a half was a hazy blur—but I thought Khalimmy said he had the copy of the video. But if he had a copy, he’d know the thing wasn’t password-protected. If he had a copy, he could have gone after the Florentine himself. But he didn’t ask for the Florentine. He didn’t expect us to have it—he didn’t expect it to be here. He just wanted a password. The password. There were no other files with the video—I’d checked multiple times. It just didn’t make sense.

  I took a deep breath and stretched my arms upward, then reached down to scratch an itch on my thigh through my moist nylon climbing pants. As I dug my fingernail into the material I noticed a crinkling sound, the sound of a plastic wrapper, and I remembered Potter’s glow sticks. The things had been sitting there the entire time, my leg numbed to their presence the same way one learns to ignore a ring or a pair of glasses over time.

  Electrified by the renewed prospect of an escape, I shot to my feet, unzipped the zipper, and ripped one of the sticks from the pocket along the front of my leg. The plastic stick bent with a crack as the glass ampoule holding one of the stick’s two chemicals fractured, releasing its contents to mix with the other compound in the stick’s interior. A moment of shaking mixed the reactants together, generating a surprisingly bright green iridescence.

  I had to find Potter, to see if he was still alive and see if I could help. After a minute of searching I found his body along the right edge of the bowl, partially hidden by a pair of short stalagmites. His head was twisted at a grotesque angle, his legs and arms unnaturally splayed like that of a carelessly dropped puppet. Potter didn’t deserve any of this and I’d caused it. I was the reason he was dead. My eyes welled with tears. I closed them and cursed.

  I had to climb out; rope or not, I wasn’t going to die here, alone in the darkness. I was going to get out and make Khalimmy pay. I wiped my eyes dry with my forearm and returned to the wall.

  I replayed our hours-earlier rappel of the wall in my mind’s eye, trying to recall its topography to come up with a general plan of attack. My best shot was generally up and to the right—that was where I’d seen the most promising holds on my way down. Of course, this route would take me over the stalagmites and away from the safety of the pool, but what other option did I have? I scoured the face for a good starting point, and found a reasonable hold that resembled the interior of a small cup of yogurt, mid-wall, about a foot above my head. I clenched the glow stick firmly between my teeth then slotted the fingers of my left hand into the pocket. The hold was solid, so I lifted my right foot from the floor and directed my gaze to the base of the wall to locate a foothold.

  While the area above my head was sufficiently illuminated from the stick, its green glow only radiated down as far as my knees, leaving my feet shrouded in darkness. Undeterred, I dropped back to the narrow floor at the bowl’s edge and removed the second stick from my pocket. I cracked the ampoule and after a moment of vigorous shaking, loosened the laces of my right climbing shoe and inserted the stick between the alternating cords. It did the trick; a quick sweep of my foot highlighted a chain of charcoal briquette-sized stones embedded in the wall’s base, a foot from the floor. Again I reached up for the yogurt cup, then, guided by the illumination of the second stick, placed my feet on the briquette protrusions.

  Feet firmly planted, I shifted my attention back above my head. The greenish glow highlighted a triplet of closely spaced, thimble-sized holes. Maddeningly, the trio lay inches from my outstretched fingertips; to reach them, I’d need a foothold at least a foot above the briquettes, yet the green glow revealed only smooth, vertical rock. It would have to be enough. I raised my right foot and smeared it against the slab, actively applying pressure much like a masseur might press his palm against a tensed muscle. Under my leg’s pressure, the climbing shoe’s rubber dug into the rock’s minute grooves and held fast, giving me enough height to reach the three dime-sized holes. I slotted my three middle fingers into the thimbles, and, with a look downward, was able to drag both feet up onto a wide, quarter-inch-deep ledge.

  I breathed a breath of relief and focused on the dull ache in my arm and the growing burning of my fingers’ tendons. Slowly and methodically I ascended the route, up and right, up and right, lightly testing each new hold before committing my weight. I wasn’t a religious person, but I considered that I might have to reevaluate my beliefs if I survived; the holds were almost too good—well spaced, deep and positive.

  Thirty feet up, I cranked my right bicep tight to pull my body into the rock and reached up, left, for what looked to be the lower, semicircular rim of a natural jug. My fingertips just barely rounded its lip, but it wasn’t enough; my hand didn’t have enough contact surface area to hold on, and my engorged right bicep, now supporting virtually all of my body weight, burned painfully.

  I closed my eyes, inhaled deeply through my nose, and wriggled the pad of my left index finger a hair farther around the rim until, unexpectedly, it caught a little divot along the lip’s interior. Anything—an increase in perspiration, a poorly planned shift in balance, or an inadvertent twitch, would compromise the friction bonding my skin to the rock and send me careening down into the water, or worse, into a sharp stalagmite. I needed a better foothold to improve my grip. I craned my neck and scanned the porous wall by my feet for potentials until my eyes locked onto a pocket the size of an eggshell near my left knee. With glacial slowness I raised my left leg until the tip of my foot hovered in front of its target, then carefully inserted the toe of my climbing shoe into the cavity. That gave me the extra reac
h I needed. I dug my left hand deep into the jug and breathed a sigh of relief. For the moment, I was free of imminent danger.

  After two minutes of alternating grips and shaking out my arms, the burning in my arms abated. Against my better judgment, I gazed down to gauge my progress—the light from my shoe’s glow stick was dwindling prematurely and now penetrated just inches below my footholds. Probably better that I couldn’t judge my true height, but I’d need to reach the top soon. At least my teeth-clenched glow stick was still burning bright.

  I scanned the area above my head—a cue ball-sized pocket sat a few feet up at ten o’clock; at two o’clock, a shallow, sloping shelf rose diagonally up and into the darkness. I liked shelves, even narrow ones, so long as they angled upward. I extended my right hand and slid it up and right along the two-inch-deep outcropping for a grip. Nothing solid, but nothing to sneeze at either. I tightened my fingers on the ridge and adjusted my feet. Hand over hand, I worked my body up the diagonal shelf, two feet, then four feet, then six. And hold after hold, the shelf improved, offering an almost rain gutter-like rail to ascend.

  After a blissful twelve feet, the shelf disappeared into the face, ending at a pair of large gouged pocks. I was getting close. I could feel it. Perhaps it was the cave’s acoustics or maybe subtle changes in the air currents, or something subconscious. I worked my hands into the higher of the two natural scars, feeling the increasing burn in my forearms, then rose up and scanned the wall’s face. The glow stick dangling from my mouth illuminated a scene that was at the same time terrifying and gruesome. I was just four feet from the top, from surviving the horror of the last few hours. Yet, between my hands and the ledge above, not a single pocket, shelf, or nub graced the smooth wall—I’d reached a dead end. Dead in more than one way. Linda’s limp, lifeless arm dangled sickeningly over the edge, her body wedged between the two stalagmites above. My mouth opened in an involuntary gasp, and before I could shut it, the glow stick slipped from my teeth, bounced off my foot, and careened into the darkness below.