The Five Greatest Warriors: A Novel

by Matthew Reilly

Cut into a salt mountain near the spring, however, was the entrance to a long-abandoned mine.

  The entrance was sealed with dried-out wooden planks and half-a-century’s worth of windblown sand. Rail tracks disappeared under the planks and a few iron minecars stood rusted to the tracks. Smashed kerosene lamps lay strewn on the ground.

  Weathered signs in English, Hebrew and Arabic warned: ‘DANGER: UNSTABLE/FALLING ROCKS’, ‘DO NOT ENTER’ and ‘DANGER:FLAMMABLE GASES IN THIS MINE (METHANE): NO LIVE FLAMES’.

  ‘1930s-era mine. British,’ Iolanthe said, looking at the build- plates on the minecars. ‘These minecars were built in Sheffield in 1922.’

  ‘But it’s probably built on top of a much older mine started by the Romans,’ Jack said. ‘I’d guess it was the modern miners who struck methane, since the Romans would’ve used live flames.’

  ‘Flammable gas leaks in mines are not pretty when they ignite,’ Iolanthe warned.

  Jack nodded at a bulky blue canvas bag he’d put in the hack of the jeep. ‘I’ve brought some breathing masks along, as well as an inflatable air-seal, just in case it becomes necessary to seal off a nasty section of the mine.’

  ‘Is this the only entrance?’ Lily asked.

  ‘I doubt it,’ Jack said. ‘There could be miles of roadways inside this place. There are probably several entrances dotted along the mountain spur.’

  ‘So what do we do exactly?’ Iolanthe asked.

  ‘We go in,’ Jack said. ‘And see what we find.’

  Using a crowbar, Jack dislodged the old wooden planks sealing the entrance. Then, guided by the headlights of their little jeep, the three of them headed into the mine.

  It was like a fantasy world: the walls and ceilings were completely white, made entirely of salt. Crystalline and translucent, it looked like the inside of an ice castle. The crusty white roads were as slippery as hell.

  It was a world of white, and even though each tunnel was numbered, it was completely disorienting. The only trick Jack could think of to mark their route was the same one used by Theseus in the Minotaur’s labyrinth: he laid glowsticks along the way, so at least they’d be able to get back out.

  Jack drove carefully through the network of white-walled tunnels, rising and falling, bending and twisting.

  As they descended further into the mine, they noticed an unusual progression: near the surface, the mine tunnels were wider and more sharply cut, with the major arteries featuring minecar tracks and cabling for the electric lights; but as they went deeper, the trappings of modern mining gradually disappeared.

  The tunnels became rougher, rounder and narrower; the wooden supports holding up the ceiling became thicker and more primitive. And the numbers above each tunnel were now carved as long-faded Roman numerals.

  Jack pulled the jeep to a halt.

  ‘We’re now in the original Roman salt mine.’ He eyed the ancient timber supports warily. ‘Hope those beams hold up for a little while longer. Still, it’s too narrow for the jeep. We go on foot from here.’

  He grabbed the canvas bag from the back of the jeep and slung, it over his shoulder.

  They walked for thirty minutes.

  ‘Captain,’ Iolanthe said wearily, ‘do you have a plan here? Are we actually looking for something?’

  ‘Yes, as a matter of fact . . .’

  They stepped out into a tunnel-junction: three tunnels branched off it, hut all three had been boarded up with loosely nailed wooden slats.

  The usual modern warnings had been painted in glaring red onto the slats hut much older warnings had been etched into the salt-encrusted doorways themselves. They were only just readable.

  NOLI INTRARE. CANALIS INSTABILIS.

  ‘It’s Latin,’ Lily said. “Do not enter. Mine tunnels unstable.”

  ‘Even the Romans had their limits,’ Jack said. ‘This is what we’re looking for.’

  ‘And that is . . . ?’ Iolanthe asked.

  Jack turned. ‘Remember the James Letter, the one James sent to Mary Magdalene in France:

  He lies in peace,

  In a place where even the mighty Romans fear to tread.

  In a kingdom of white.

  ‘Scholars assumed James was describing someplace hostile to the Romans: Persia or northern Europe. But nobody thought of a place the Romans had barred off themselves. I was looking for this: for the point at which the Romans found this mine to be too dangerous, the point beyond which they feared to tread.’

  Jack stood before the triple junction, assessing each possible passageway. He stood deathly still.

  ‘What are you looking for—?’

  ‘Shhh,’ he said. ‘Not looking. . . listening.’

  He stepped over to the left-hand tunnel, peered through its slats, listening intently.

  ‘Shit,’ he said.

  ‘What?’ Iolanthe asked.

  ‘Listen. . .’

  Iolanthe did so. And suddenly she heard it. Voices. Distant, echoing voices. Coming from somewhere down in the barred-off section of the mine.

  Quickly, quietly and firmly, Jack started pulling the slats free.

  ‘Someone’s already here,’ he whispered.

  Moving with extreme caution, Jack ventured down a steep slippery passageway on foot, followed by Lily and Iolanthe. The passageway appeared to end at a dark precipice up ahead.

  ‘We came in from the north. There must be another entrance from the south—’

  A flash of artificial light suddenly slashed across the end of their passageway.

  ‘Flashlights . . .’ Jack breathed. ‘Stay low.’

  The three of them crept toward the end of the passageway.

  Jack stopped at the precipice—their passageway ended at a sharp brink overlooking a gallery from up near its ceiling.

  And there, down on the floor of the gallery, standing beside a large flat wheel-shaped device, Jack saw several figures carrying flashlights, looking down into a wide salt pit.

  Scimitar and Mao Gongli, flanked by four of Carnivore’s Russian Spetsnaz guards.

  ‘Son of a bitch,’ Jack whispered. ‘We found it.’

  ‘Your master’s prize,’ the Saudi spat, handing it over to the guards.

  The commander of the guards looked pleased. ‘We will return to the surface and inform the general of your find.’

  Covered by their Russian guards, Vulture, Scimitar and Mao then left the chamber through a doorway to the south.

  Lily made to stand. ‘Daddy, we have to do something. They’re getting away. . .’

  But Jack hadn’t moved.

  He was just staring down at the ancient scaffold rising up from the pit.

  Iolanthe watched him closely. ‘What is it?’

  Jack quoted:

  ‘His wisdom lies with him still,

  Protected by a twin who meets all thieves first.’

  ‘A twin . . .’ he said, still staring intently downward. ‘A twin who meets all thieves first . . .’

  Then it clicked.

  ‘It’s a fake,’ he said softly.

  ‘A what?’ Iolanthe spun.

  ‘What’s a fake?’ Lily said.

  Jack swallowed. ‘The Pillar they just took. It’s designed to deceive anyone who comes here: to make them think they found the real Pillar. Mao, Vulture and Scimitar just took a fake Pillar to Carnivore.’

  A Roman-era ladder led down from Jack’s perch to one of the salt piles on the floor of the abandoned gallery.

  Walking slowly and silently by the light of a couple of glowsticks, followed by Lily and Iolanthe, Jack passed between the high mounds of salt before coming to the edge of the wide rectangular pit at the far end.

  The slave wheel was a lot bigger up close, the size of a small car. Rusty manacles dangled from it.

  The pit itself dropped a full fifty feet to a floor that was covered in a layer of sickly milk-coloured water.

  ‘Brine,’ Jack said. ‘They must have struck groundwater and it mixed with the salt.’

  Some tied-together
wooden planks formed a loose bridge across the brine lake, giving access to four slightly elevated square tunnels on the other side. Vulture had left some glowsticks in the far-right tunnel.

  ‘You, stay here,’ Jack said to Iolanthe. ‘You’—to Lily—‘come with me.’

  ‘Why can’t I come?’ Iolanthe protested.

  ‘Because I still haven’t figured you out. I can’t tell when you’re going to kill me or save me, so it’s better just to keep you out of the equation. You keep watch up here.’

  Iolanthe rolled her eyes, completely unruffled. ‘Fine.’

  Jack climbed down the ladder into the pit. Lily followed. Then, equally slowly, almost with reverence, they walked across the loosely-tied boards that spanned the brine lake, before disappearing inside the right-hand tunnel.

  The white-walled tunnel wasn’t long, only about forty feet. It ended at a vertical salt-walled shaft that plunged further downward. An A-frame with a rope hanging from it dangled into the shaft, presumably left by Vulture.

  Jack shone his flashlight down the shaft.

  Ten feet down, a horizontal cross-shaft bored into the salt wall. Its mouth was heavily salt-encrusted, as if a seal of some kind had been broken. More of Vulture’s glowsticks led into it.

  ‘Vulture was too hasty,’ jack said. ‘He took the first option, and found the twin who meets all thieves first.’

  Jack shone the beam of his flashlight further down the shaft, to a part of the salt wall below the cross-shaft Vulture had broken into, to reveal . . .

  . . . a translucent section of wall.

  Lily caught her breath.

  The apparently solid wall of the shaft was not solid at all. There was another cross-shaft down there, whose entrance had been covered over with a layer of—

  ‘Salt seals,’ Jack said. ‘And that explains the middle part of the letter.

  ‘He lies in peace,

  In a place where even the mighty Romans fear to tread.

  In a kingdom of white

  He does not grow old.’

  ‘He doesn’t grow old because the sealing of the salt protects his body from the corrosive effects of oxygen in the air. Archaeologists have found bodies in salt mines in Romania and Iran that date from over a thousand years before Christ and they still have skin, hair and beards. Even their clothes retain their colour because the salt has kept out the air.’

  Slinging his canvas bag over his shoulder, Jack grabbed the rope hanging from the A-frame and started to lower himself into the shaft.

  Lily was only just starting to grasp what he had said.

  ‘Daddy, wait. Are you saying that lying in a sealed chamber down there, with the last Pillar buried with him, is the perfectly preserved body of Jesus Christ?’

  In answer Jack stopped what he was doing, looked Lily in the eye, and gave her a single silent nod.

  Then he continued his descent.

  Moments later, Jack hung in front of the wall of the salt shaft, staring at the translucent section of it ten feet below Vulture’s cross-shaft.

  He raised a small handheld pick-axe and then abruptly, for some reason, Jack West Jr paused.

  He’d uncovered many ancient things in his time: the scrolls from the Library of Alexandria, most of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, the tombs of Alexander the Great and Genghis Khan.

  But this was something else.

  This was something more.

  This was the most famous person to ever walk the Earth. A man who inspired religions, whose acts and words were still repeated two thousand years after he had lived, and most of all, this was a man who many believed had risen bodily to heaven after he had been crucified.

  ‘Daddy?’ Lily said from twenty feet above him. ‘You okay?’

  Jack blinked. ‘Yeah . . . yeah, I’m okay.’

  Then he took a deep breath and hit the false salt wall with his little pick-axe.

  It wasn’t very thick—barely a centimetre—and it came away easily as Jack chipped at it.

  Soon, a round gap the size of a manhole appeared and Jack climbed through it, guided by a fresh glowstick.

  After a short crawl down a tight tunnel, he came to a small wooden door, encrusted around the edges with salt crystals.

  He paused again. If the chamber beyond that door really was oxygen-sealed, and if it really contained—well, he didn’t want to be the one who contaminated it with fresh oxygen.

  He extracted the inflatable air-seal unit from his bag. Made of clear plastic, it was designed to inflate across the width of a larger passageway, sealing it. But it would work in this small space just as well. Two Ziploc zippered doors in its middle acted like an airlock.

  Jack inflated the air-seal unit behind him and it expanded quickly to fill the tight tunnel. Once it was safely in place, he turned his attention back to the small salt-encrusted wooden door.

  It opened with a sharp crack, the salt seal breaking free.

  Jack passed through it.

  He emerged inside a small salt-walled chamber in which he was only just able to stand. The walls were pure white. The air was musty and stale.

  A coffin-sized recess was cut into the salt wall at the far end. Nailed to the wall above the recess was a square of faded wood on which four letters had been crudely carved:

  ‘INRI’.

  Jack swallowed at the sight of it. It was the sign. The actual sign.

  It stood for: IESVS NAZARENVS REX IVDAEORVM.

  Jesus the Nazarene, King of the Jews.

  Jack lowered his eyes to behold the recess itself.

  Lying on it was a man-sized figure, wrapped entirely in loose white cloth, arms folded across its chest in eternal rest.

  Where the arms met, Jack could discern a rectangular bulge.

  The Pillar.

  With a slowness that betrayed the awe he felt, Jack West Jr approached the cloth-wrapped figure.

  He stood before it.

  He could hear his heart pounding inside his head.

  To get the Pillar, he would have to remove the loose cloth over the figure’s face.

  Slowly, Jack pulled back the cloth.

  For some reason that he could not explain, Jack couldn’t bring himself to look directly upon the figure’s face—in some corner of his mind, he felt that he was unworthy to look upon the face of so great an individual.

  Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan, they were one thing, but this was different.

  This man was different.

  He was not a warrior in the usual sense, the military sense. His war had been one of ideas, ideas that had swept the world. His victories had been far more long-lasting than anything Genghis or Alexander or Napoleon had achieved. Their victories had barely outlived them. This man’s victories were still going.

  Jack gulped.

  Taking Jesus Christ’s Pillar was sacrilegious enough. He would not look upon the man himself.

  And so, keeping his eyes firmly focused on the figure’s chest, Jack saw the Pillar clasped in perfectly preserved hands.

  Out of the corner of his eye, Jack could see a bearded face—the beard was brown, the eyes were closed, the face serene.

  He couldn’t look at it directly.

  Gently, slowly, reverently, Jack lifted the Pillar from the perfectly preserved hands, for a moment brushing his fingers against those of the Pillar’s former owner.

  Electricity flowed through him—an electricity unlike anything he had ever felt in his life—an incredible feeling of clarity and lightness. It shot through his body like a lightning bolt of pure—

  Jack replaced the cloth over the bearded figure’s face, and the feeling immediately went away. He still did not look directly at the face.

  He released the breath he’d been holding. In his shaking hand was the Pillar.

  Then he backed out of the salt-walled chamber in silence and closed its small wooden door behind him, knowing that the sailt crystals at the door’s edges would reseal in time.

  Then he left, passing through his pl
astic airlock, not quite believing what he had just seen and done.