They reached an intersection. Three hallways spanned out in front of them. The light clawed into each hallway only a few feet. Each hallway looked exactly the same, cinderblock, painted white. Except for one thing. Each hallway had a bronze plaque. Each plaque was embossed with a different symbol. The first was a star. The second a cross. The third, a circle.
“These guardians don’t make it easy,” she said. Symbols. Granted they bridged languages, but symbols could be misinterpreted. Without her gut feeling that she should choose the Pakal over the other three symbols in that cliff dwelling, she’d be crushed right now. Claustrophobic or not, being crushed was still a distinct possibility. The massive weight of the cathedral above seemed to bow the ceiling in this part of the hall.
“If Tommy followed my design concept, only one hallway will lead to the safe room,” Braydon said. “Go down the wrong one and a motion sensor will trip a door, trapping the intruder and filling the space with a deadly gas.”
“Poison gas?” echoed Christa.
“Seems in bad taste now,” said Braydon, “but at the time, I thought of it as a game. I had different symbols for the three hallways. Mine had to do with the Trinity.”
“Three hallways,” said Christa. “Father, Son, Holy Spirit. Which was the right one in your design?”
“Spirit,” said Braydon with a shrug. It was the first time she had seen him looking sheepish. “Tommy had a taste for whiskey. The symbol was a tongue of fire.”
Daniel pushed by them. “He’s a priest,” he said, “just like I trained to be. The hallway we should choose is obviously the one marked with a cross.”
Braydon yanked Daniel back. “The best security systems are intuitive to the owner,” he said, “so they don’t have to call in help to remind them how to access the very thing they’re trying to keep safe from others. At the same time, the safety system should not be obvious to anyone but the owner. And you are nothing like Tommy O’Malley.”
“All right, then,” Daniel said, pointing to the second hallway. “That’s the Star of David, the symbol of Judaism. Urim and Thummim were the divining stones used in the Breastplate of Aaron by the Jewish high priest during the Temple of Solomon era.”
She felt like an idiot, but she held her hand open to each of the three hallways in turn. It was like an electric current laced the air, that metallic, tingly feeling that comes before a lightning strike. “The circle is the right path,” she said.
“I’m telling you, it’s the star,” said Daniel. “The circle isn’t a Christian symbol.”
“The Circle of Seven,” Christa said. “That’s what this is all about.” But if they chose it, and were trapped, it would be her fault.
“Except it isn’t a circle,” Braydon said. “You see the two bands? It’s a ring. O’Malley drove me crazy with his opera music when we’d meet to play with the design of the safe room. He insisted on listening to Wagner’s opera trilogy, The Ring. He said it helped him commit abstract ideas to memory.”
“I’m the one with the degree in theology, like your friend, O’Malley,” said Daniel. “He’d know that the Star of David is also significant for the number seven. The star’s six points and its center are relevant to the seven names of angels and Kabbalistic traditions. Urim and Thummim are two of the seven sacred stones. This has got to be the way.” He passed beneath the Star of David and strode quickly down the hallway. A loud click stopped him in his tracks, but no light switched on. He spun around. Before he could retreat, a steel door sliced downward from the ceiling, trapping him behind it. The last thing Christa saw was the terror in his eyes.
“Daniel!” she yelled. “The poison gas!” She lunged for the door, pressed her palms against the cold, hard steel, fighting to push it upwards and free him.
Braydon pulled her back gently. “He’s fine,” said Braydon. “Even in the game, Tommy objected to the idea of poison gas. I changed it to the trap door setting off an alarm.”
As if on cue, an intensely loud siren blared from behind the trap door. Christa clamped her ears with her palms. Braydon was either grimacing at the noise, or smiling at Daniel’s bad fortune, maybe both.
“Tommy should have gone with the poison gas,” shouted Braydon over the din. “Then Dubler would only be killing himself. That alarm is going to lead Rambitskov right to us.”
“We can’t leave Daniel,” she shouted back. “How do you get that door open?”
“We got five minutes. Then that door opens, but the other trap doors come down, permanently. It was O’Malley’s way of allowing the intruder a chance to escape.” He raced down the hallway marked with the circle. She ran after him. The alarm faded as they distanced themselves from Daniel, lights turning on then off behind them as they progressed. It had to be a whole crosstown block, the length of the cathedral above, before the hallway dead ended at a bolted steel door. An electronic scanner, like the one that opened the panel to the stairway down here glowed on the wall to her right. “Doesn’t make sense,” she said, struggling to catch her breath. “O’Malley wouldn’t send us down here without a way forward.”
“It’s not biometric,” said Braydon. “In my design, it’s a sophisticated metal detector. I figured if I had to listen to Wagner’s The Ring when we played around with the safe room design, I’d incorporate a magic ring that gave its wearer special powers. In this case, he’d press his hand on the scanner to gain entry. The scanner will unlock the door when it detects the metal and mineral content of a unique ring.”
“Or in this case, a crucifix is the key,” said Christa.
“Of course,” Braydon said. “When we get through this you, me and O’Malley got a date at McSorley’s. Drinks are on me.” He placed the crucifix on the scanner. The door slid aside with an ethereal whoosh.
Christa felt her hand clasp Braydon’s. It was like a world opened up to them and they were the first to see it. He squeezed her fingers. Together, they stepped across the threshold.
“We are still underground,” she said. “Right?” The chamber wasn’t even that big, once she got her bearings.
“Seven sides,” Braydon said, “appropriate.”
“Only ten feet across, but look up there.” She pointed towards the high-domed ceiling. It was painted like a cerulean sky blazing with bright halogen lights centered in gold leaf starbursts. “It feels more like a transportation device than a room,” she said. And, in a way, it was.
Books and artifacts crowded the walls, beckoning to them to explore other times, other worlds. The “sky” was held aloft by seven classical pillars, one in each interior angle. The door they just entered was flanked by four walls, two to either side of them. Each featured a built-in bookcase, seven shelves high, crammed with books. She drew in closer. They were religious volumes, various versions and translations of the Bible, a complete Jewish Encyclopedia, the Book of Mormon. The third wall to her left featured a collage of framed prints.
Most startling of all was the seventh wall. A life-size depiction of a man dressed in robes, wearing a golden, bejeweled Breastplate, looked like he might step right into the room. The old, bearded man held out his arms in supplication. “Aaron,” she said, “brother of Moses. The high priest of ancient Judaism.” His expression looked up in pure adoration towards a central, bright light, surrounded by a modernized sun, its seven gilt rays curving outwards to fill the interior of a cupola that formed the hub of the dome. This sun spotlighted a circular pedestal table, about waist-high, in the center of the chamber. The table’s top was a map of the world, rendered in a mosaic of lapus lazuli, malachite and marble.
The door slid shut behind them with a hiss and a final thud of a steel bolt sliding back into place.
“That son of a gun finally got me trapped in a library,” said Braydon.
“Father O’Malley certainly has an affinity for drama.”
“Religion without drama is like a sky without clouds, he always said. I expected to find the Urim and Thummim, not a library teaching about it.”
> “The stones are here,” she said. The electric tingling was so strong it buzzed.
“Lots of clues to their location. Not much time.” He looked at his watch. “I figure we got four minutes before Rambitskov finds us.” He crossed to the panel with the framed prints, taking particular interest in the one with the old-fashioned mason’s square and compass surrounding the letter G, the symbol of the Freemasons. “One of my ex-partners was a mason. Always hated it when cops said they were giving their collars the third degree. The expression started with the challenging questions of the master mason’s third degree ceremony. Now it’s given to criminals.”
“Conroy said the masons, in their 13th, 14th and 21st degree ceremonies, teach that the Urim and Thummim were part of the treasury of Solomon’s Temple,” she said. “The Jewish Kabbalistic traditions concur.”
He pointed to the painting of a man, dressed in nineteenth century clothing, kneeling in a grove of trees, shielding his eyes against a bright light shining from above. “Joseph Smith, founder of the Mormon church, seeing the light from the angel, Moroni. What’s he doing here, besides looking holier than thou?”
“Moroni presented Joseph Smith with gold plates that contained the Book of Mormon.” She quickly rehashed Conroy’s tutorial. “Smith used Urim and Thummim to translate it. I bet O’Malley and Zeke didn’t think much of that story, considering the stones were supposed to be under the protection of the Circle of Seven since the sixteenth century.”
“Which would make Joseph Smith one of the Circle of Seven,” said Braydon. “He used the power of the stones to create a new religion, before they were, once again, lost in history.”
“That’s all we need,” she said. “More fodder for Baltasar’s bid at becoming the next Prophet.”
“Not if I can stop him. This chamber doesn’t follow my safe room design, but I know Tommy. To him and that rabbi, the Urim and Thummim are the center of their world.” He rested his palms on the rim of the round map table in the hub of the room. He pointed to the lapus lazuli letter tiles set in the malachite that curved around the outer edges of the world map on its east and west perimeter. “Lux to the west. Veritas to the east.” He pointed to six empty squares along the map’s northern rim. “So what goes here?”
Christa ran her fingertip over the letters. “It’s not smooth. I can feel the edges of the letter tiles. Do you see a pocket knife anywhere in here?”
Braydon slid an object from his suit coat’s inner pocket. He handed her a pocket knife. She recognized the scout logo. “Don’t tell me,” she said. “Eagle scout?”
“On my honor,” Braydon said.
Her first love was an Eagle Scout. They had met on the beach in Portugal, where he was vacationing with his family for a week. Spring break, he called it. He was so American, so happy to be with her, so accepting of her family’s eccentricities. But if he had tried to reach her after returning home, she’d never have known it. She never had a dependable address growing up.
She pried open Braydon’s blade. With a little maneuvering that felt like sacrilege, she wedged out the L tile from the “Lux.” She quickly pried out the rest of the tiles, placing them across the expanse of the green malachite Asia. “The six spaces must be for an anagram.” She scrambled them, sliding them into different combinations. “Travel?”
Braydon shook his head. “Tommy hated to travel, but he loved the Latin language. He always yearned for the pre-Vatican II days, when the mass was celebrated in Latin.”
“Good,” she said. “I’m fluent in Latin.”
“Of course you are,” said Braydon.
“My parents made sure of it. Learning Latin was sine qua non in the Devlin clan.”
“Well, tempus fugit.”
“We also played a lot of Scrabble,” she said. She shuffled the letters, switching her mindset to Latin roots.
He edged around her to scan the bookshelves. “Bibles, every one of them,” he said. “Different versions, translations.” He moved to the next bookcases. “Translations of the Book of Mormon, the Torah.” He crossed to the other bookcases, finally zeroing in on a bright yellow paperback. “Here’s one for the rest of us.” She nodded at the title as he showed it to her, Latin for Lay People.
“Imagine what the translators could do with that title.”
“Just remember this quote by Seneca,” he said, opening to a center page. “Fallaces sunt rerum species.”
“The outward appearances of things are deceiving,” she translated. “Very appropriate, considering we’re in a secret chamber beneath one of the most visited cathedrals in the world.” She quickly shuffled the letters into different combinations. The word teased the back of her mind, screaming for her to hear it. It began with a V. She slid the V into the first empty square. The next letter had to be a vowel, most likely I. She slid it in.
“Urim and Thummim were used as divining stones,” he said, thumbing through the paperback’s pages. “The high priest would use the stones for judgment, to decide if a man was evil or good, guilty or innocent, cowardly or brave. Lux, light. Veritas, truth.” He paused. She could feel the word now. She slid in the R, then the T. Braydon slammed closed the volume in his hand. She slipped in the U. Only one empty square remained. She turned to him. They caught each other’s gaze and smiled. “Virtus,” they said together.
“Meaning virtue,” she said, “courage.”
“It’s listed in this book with other common uses of Lux and Veritas. Lux, Veritas, Virtus is the motto of Northeastern University” said Braydon.
She slid the S into the last spot. In the next instant, a shudder, a loud bang, and the world spun out of control.
CHAPTER 47
Christa raised her hands away from the map table. Its top rotated, spinning the map of the world. The Lux side now faced east, Veritas west, and the intact letters of Virtus, upside down. From deep within the pedestal base of the map table came a series of clicks, then the whir of a motor. “Are you sure your friend, O’Malley, wouldn’t use poison gas?”
The spinning stopped. A whoosh of expelled air. She held her breath, just in case, for all the good that would do. The inner circle, containing the mosaic of the world map, lifted upwards.
Seven chrome posts smoothly raised the top of the table. With a whisper, it stopped. She crouched to see into the velvet compartment revealed beneath. Braydon came beside her, his lips parted, eyes wide. “I see wonderful things,” she whispered. It was her father’s favorite quote when they found a remarkable archaeological artifact in his digs. Harry Burton made the words famous when he first laid eyes on Tutankhamen’s tomb brimming with splendid golden treasure. But that find was nothing compared to this.
There, in an unornamented silver box, hardly big enough to hold a pen set, lay a deep red ruby and a golden topaz, brilliant against the black velvet cushion. The gemstones emitted a light from within, a palpable energy. Hardly bigger than a robin’s egg, each gem held within it a compacted force, waiting to be unleashed. They captured the brightness of the spotlight shining down from the stylized sun directly above and tripled it, refracting it around the chamber like a sunrise glinting off a pool of rippling water. “Urim and Thummim,” she said, her throat dry. She had to have them, to hold them in her hands. A voice, somewhere in the distance, shouted a warning. Wait! The brilliance of the stones blinded and deafened. Nothing existed outside the Urim and Thummim.
She reached in and lifted the box, tilting it between two of the seven posts, drawing it closer to her, freeing the gems from the confines of their little temple.
A sharp pain in her wounded arm. Braydon gripped her. She’d never told him that she’d been shot. He didn’t realize he was hurting her. “Didn’t you hear me,” he said. “This could be booby-trapped.”
The silver box weighed heavier in her hands. The ruby and topaz winked in the diffuse light outside the spotlight of the stylized sun. This wasn’t the Temple of Solomon, centuries before Christa walked the Earth. They were beneath Saint Patrick’s
Cathedral, in New York City, with bad guys breathing down their necks. “Your friend wouldn’t have sent us down here if he didn’t want us to have the Urim and Thummim.”
“More like he doesn’t want anyone else to have them,” he said. “O’Malley would count on me to deactivate any traps before I tripped them.”
A loud bang hammered the steel entry door. “Fox!” a man’s voice yelled from behind it. “Open up, or I’ll blow down this door!”
A sickening thud reverberated throughout the chamber. The floor rumbled and shook. Braydon caught her arm and steadied her as the jolt nearly knocked her off her feet.
“Rambitskov,” Braydon muttered. “And he’s not just huff and puff.”
“Did he really just set off explosives beneath Saint Patrick’s?”
“That wasn’t him,” he said. “Didn’t sound like C-4. It came from beneath us.”
A deafening grinding noise filled the chamber. Braydon widened his stance and steadied her as the floor shook again, shifting beneath them. Clouds of dust and cement powder billowed from the perimeter of the room. At her feet, the inner circle of the floor rotated 180 degrees. “You know those revolving restaurants on top of skyscrapers,” she said. “I went to one once in Tokyo. Got sick.” The floor continued to rotate while the seven-sided perimeter remained still. “This is worse.”
“I’ll keep that in mind on our first date,” said Braydon. A lurch knocked them both to their knees. The floor began ascending, just as the hub of the table had risen to reveal Urim and Thummim.
“Set the C-4,” Rambitskov’s voice called urgently from behind the door. “Now!”
She crouched next to Braydon. The floor rose at an alarming rate. She grabbed his shoulder. “I don’t want to get to heaven this way,” she shouted over the din of the grinding motors and gears beneath them. The ethereal “sky” of the domed ceiling looked uplifting, but would surely crush them.
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