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Indisputable Proof

Page 21

by Gary Williams


  “Time to leave. We have what we came for,” Diaz said.

  “Wait. No, not yet,” she said, still eyeing the Hebrew text. “I’m...struggling to understand.” Her voice drifted off as she continued to scrutinize the writing.

  “There is no reason to understand,” Diaz said tersely. He opened the lid with the minute carving of a man’s head and revealed the tiny roll. “We have the jar with the next clue, now let’s go. This place is a crypt for the Apostles, and we should not be here.”

  “Wait!” Jade yelled. Her voice echoed beyond the room down the corridor. “I need to read this,” she said, giving Diaz a cold stare.

  Tolen seemed oblivious to their querulous exchange of words.

  Jade suddenly felt something solid land on her shoulder, and slink down her right arm. She screamed, shaking her arm frantically. The object fell to the stick-covered floor. All three shined their flashlight down but saw nothing beyond the natural debris. Acting as one mind, they swung their flashlights up to the ceiling to look for the source of whatever had landed on Jade.

  A dozen feet above, a sloped overhang started at the back wall and angled down toward the center of the room. There appeared to be a gutter where more small sticks, branches, and leaves were clustered. The ceiling above it was substantially higher and ashen.

  “It was just a stick that fell on me,” Jade said. She turned her attention back to the curious text. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed Tolen continued to examine the strange section of overhanging roof.

  “Let’s go,” Diaz demanded, this time more urgently, as he slipped the jar inside his jacket.

  Jade turned to him with steely eyes. “I only need a few minutes to translate this. Then, and only then, will we leave,” she growled back. Jade once again turned to the wall.

  Tolen was still looking to the ceiling.

  Jade watched as Diaz abruptly stepped to one end of the gold scroll and took out his pocket knife. “You want to read this? Then we’ll take it with us.” He wedged the knife underneath the edge of the gold plating and began to pry it away from the wall.

  Jade heard a scraping noise emanate from above. Tolen was still staring upward. There were several thumps as something fell from the ceiling and struck the matting of sticks. Jade shined her flashlight down to see two light-colored stones that had settled on the ground. Tolen reached down and picked one up.

  Diaz paused briefly then returned to working the blade in between the wall and the edge of the gold scroll.

  Another object struck the floor, cracking a branch with a brief flash.

  “What the bloody hell is that?” Jade asked.

  Tolen’s eyes revealed a sudden understanding. “It’s flint. Diaz, please stop what you’re doing.”

  Diaz had already jabbed the tip of the blade behind the gold scroll yet again and had pried the thin sheet slightly away from the wall. “See? I can get this off, and we’ll take it with us.”

  His words had no sooner died than a barrage of flint began falling from the high roof. The three were forced to retreat flush against the wall with the scroll. Flint rocks rained down after skipping across the partial ledge above. Sparks ignited, bursting and falling in a cascade of flickering light. With utter horror, Jade realized the angled ledge with the sticks and twigs was being set ablaze as the flint fell from high above and ignited the fertile debris. Fire now dripped onto the dry, stick-covered floor.

  In an instant, the floor erupted in flames.

  They had no choice. They ran ahead, scampering over the burning area before it completely blocked their way. They spilled out into the corridor. The back of Diaz’s jacket caught fire, and Tolen patted it quickly using his own shirt over his hands to extinguish the flame.

  Jade looked back into the room and saw it was being swallowed in vaulting yellow flames. Smoke was already pouring out into the passageway. It had taken mere seconds for the falling flint to spark the dry, brittle debris, catch fire, and completely destroy the room.

  “It’s a trap!” Tolen yelled as the fire crackled harshly. “That scroll was never supposed to be removed from the wall!”

  Jade stared at Diaz sternly.

  “How was I to know?!” he said, spreading his empty hands apart in appeasement and shrugging his shoulders defensively.

  The heat pushed from the room and pressed against them. Jade looked to the ground and was aghast to see the floor from the room streaking outward on fire, coming toward them at a frenetic pace. Not only was the room a deadly snare, it was now horribly obvious, with the corridors filled with highly flammable tinder, the entire complex was part of the elaborate trap.

  “Move!” Tolen ordered. He led them back down the corridor at a run. Jade followed, nearly stumbling on the jagged sticks. Diaz passed her, reaching back as he did to assist. When they reached the curved portion of the corridor, Jade stole a look back. The fire was racing toward them like a carnivore pursuing its prey. Oddly, it was running along the wall in a perfect line following the right side of the corridor. Her heart raced, and Jade turned forward, not wanting to see, feeling as if she was being chased by some primitive creature.

  Tolen shouted to them as they ran. “That sweet smell I noticed earlier is some kind of accelerant. It’s probably underneath the branches. We’ve got to get out of here. This whole place will be consumed in fire in a matter of minutes.”

  “What about the rooms with the coffins? They have no debris. We can go into one of them to avoid the fire,” Diaz offered.

  “We’ll die of smoke inhalation,” Tolen said flatly.

  They reached the intersection where the tunnel offshoot met the main corridor. Jade could feel the flames licking at their heels. She looked back briefly. “It’s following a pattern, staying to the right side,” Jade stated in a loud voice. There was no response from either Tolen or Diaz.

  The threesome dashed ahead, snapping sticks as they went. One by one, they raced past the crypt rooms where the Apostles were housed, laboring to run on the pad of natural detritus. They soon passed through the fissure and found themselves in the main room where the corkscrew tunnel had originally brought them. Jade turned. The fire shot inside the circular room and darted along the right wall. As it streaked around the perimeter, the main cavern floor, in turn, also caught fire, and smoke began billowing toward the ceiling. Tolen led them toward the wall on the far side where the spiraling tunnel exited upward. The end of the dangling rope was barely visible inside the wormhole, but before they could reach it, the fire had wrapped around the room and blocked their escape. The flames grew intense, snaking upward into the curved tunnel. Tolen took a step forward as if he might try and barge through the fire. Jade put a restraining hand on his arm. “No!” she shouted, as they watched the rope catch fire and the blaze escalate. The heat intensified exponentially.

  Their only avenue of escape was gone.

  Smoke quickly clogged the enclosure, and all three began to cough. Jade turned to see the chain of fire continue to encircle the room. It would seal their fate within seconds. She felt a flush of panic. Tolen grabbed her hand and bolted back toward the crevice where they re-entered the corridor. Diaz trailed close behind. An instant later, the circular cave was completely engulfed in fire.

  A short distance into the corridor, Jade turned back. The heat rapped her in the face with an almost physical force. Amid the blaze, the carved faces on the pilasters behind resembled a macabre scene of sinners being eradicated within a fiery pit. Diaz’s haunting comment earlier about hell seemed eerily prophetic now. As she watched, the smoldering trail of flame emerged from the circular room and streamed along on the unburned side of the corridor toward them, attacking in a straight line. It was absolutely relentless. Jade was sure its aggression was driven by some demonic intelligence.

  Tolen pulled Jade along the passageway, gliding over th
e branches and staying to the side of the tunnel which had yet to catch fire. It was odd to see one side of the passageway burning ahead, while the other half remained unlit. Whoever had planned this had done a remarkably demented job of ensuring the victims would be corralled by the fire and allowed only certain avenues of escape. The purpose for it, though, was not clear.

  The smoke was hovering at chest level in the tunnel, restricting their view. Jade coughed and hacked as Tolen pulled her along. The heavy-footed Diaz was close behind. The fire to their side flicked at them with gnarled fingers, crackling and popping loudly, trying to snatch them as they raced past. Jade felt the heat lapping at her skin, and an acrid smell filled her lungs.

  She had no idea where Tolen was leading them, and she wondered if it really mattered. There had only been one point of ingress and egress, and that was now blocked. They were trapped. Their bodies would be consumed by fire within minutes. The thought of burning alive terrified her.

  “We’ve got to go in one of these rooms!” Diaz barked.

  Against Diaz’s protests, Tolen pushed the group up the corridor. Even in her panicky state, Jade knew taking refuge in one of the Apostles’ crypts would mean certain death. Smoke in the rooms on the other side of the corridor was growing thicker by the second. As soon as the fire arrowed back up the tunnel and ignited the full breadth of flammable debris, all twelve rooms would be consumed in smoke.

  They had to keep moving and try to outrun the pursuing fire. Sheer desperation kept Jade going, even though her pragmatic side told her they were only forestalling the inevitable.

  Tolen suddenly made a drastic change in direction, cutting hard to his right where there was no fire. For a moment, Jade thought that he had relented to Diaz and entered one of the crypt rooms, but there was no stone coffin here, only a corridor. They navigated a curve to the left that straightened. Only then did she realize where they were. At the juncture of the main corridor where they had originally turned left, eventually discovering the room with the gold scroll, Tolen had now turned down the opposite corridor to the right. It was the only passageway they had not investigated.

  The inferno had yet to reach this tunnel, although there was no doubt in Jade’s mind the flames zipping up the main corridor would soon change that. This passageway, too, was laden with dried sticks and branches. The fuel would send the raging fire chasing after them. Although the tunnel was stuffy with smoke, at the moment it seemed less coarse, and Jade’s coughing abated somewhat. “Where are we going?” she managed to choke out.

  “Away from the fire,” Tolen responded.

  “And into certain death,” Diaz added morosely. The man was chugging behind with deep, raspy gasps.

  Ahead, the smoke thinned further, and Tolen’s flashlight cut into a dead-end room similar to the Gold Scroll room but with two differences: there was no scroll mounted into the wall, and the ceiling was a mere seven feet high. They had no sooner entered the room when the scorching line of fire arrived at the doorway. Jade turned when she heard the sound of the conflagration chewing up the branches. The flames rose up in the corridor, licking six feet into the air. Her chest tightened into an agonizing knot. They were moments away from being burned to death.

  At some point—Jade was not sure when—Tolen had released her hand. She now found herself cowering into Diaz’s chest. She could feel the man’s pounding heartbeat. Smoke poured into the small room, and both she and Diaz began to cough harshly as dark ash drifted down on them. Somewhere behind, she was faintly aware of Tolen crowded against the back wall. Jade watched as a line of fire entered the room, zipping around the walls from both sides, destined to meet at exactly where Tolen stood. Her eyes burned, and tears blurred her vision.

  Jade heard Tolen yell over the sizzling and popping of the flames. “Down!”

  Jade felt a weight land hard upon her and Diaz, sending them both to the debris-covered floor. In the next instant, a deafening blast sent rock fragments raining down upon them. Before she could comprehend what was happening, a noise like a freight train bearing down on her was followed by a surge of water which pummeled her into something solid. There was intense pain, and her scalp tingled. Almost as quickly, it passed.

  Jade’s world faded to black.

  CHAPTER 35

  September 13. Thursday – 3:06 a.m. Isle of Patmos, Greece

  Jade woke up in bed on top of the covers. A ceiling fan spun slowly overhead, and there was a hint of vanilla in the air. Other than the electric hum of the fan’s rotors, the room was silent. Her back hurt, and she had trouble remembering where she was or how she had gotten here. Nothing made sense. She brushed her short bangs off her forehead and found them slightly wet.

  Jade sat up. What happened? She searched her memory, dropping her head into her hands and closing her eyes. Then it all came back to her in a rush. Tolen, Diaz, and she had been searching underground, somewhere below the Petra in the catacombs of the Apostles, when Diaz triggered an ancient trap. The place caught fire, and she remembered fleeing into a room where they were trapped. There was an explosion, and she recalled a painful impact.

  That was all she could remember. How had she gotten here?

  She looked around. A decorative lamp on a bureau across the way provided generous light. The room had a single bed and a large window with bright orange curtains. The clock on the nightstand read 3:09. Was that a.m. or p.m.?

  Her PC bag was atop a small round table, along with some papers and a small stone jar.

  The jar! She suddenly remembered.

  The front door opened, and Tolen entered carrying two cups of coffee. Startled, Jade sprang to a sitting position on the side of the bed, anchoring her bare feet on the floor. She was surprised to find herself in a fluffy white terrycloth bathrobe. She gapped it open at the collar, looked straight down, and was shocked to see nothing but skin underneath the material. She quickly drew the robe closed up to her neck, feeling her face color with embarrassment.

  “What happened? Why am I dressed like...this?” she said.

  “We blasted our way out of the underground tunnels,” Tolen said, taking a seat next to Jade on the bed. “Are you feeling okay?” His words were soothing, compassionate.

  “Blasted our way out? How?”

  “I used a limited explosive charge I brought from the plane. It did the trick,” Tolen said, locking her in his azure blue gaze. She could smell a tinge of his cologne, and it settled on her with calming assurance.

  “James Bond of the Americas,” Jade said playfully. Her tone came out much more lightly than she had planned. Then again, why the hell not, she thought. It appeared once again Samuel Tolen had saved her life…and Diaz’s, too, for that matter.

  Jade noticed Tolen was dressed in different clothes. He had on a long-sleeved, tan button-up shirt with perfect creases, dark dress slacks, and dress shoes.

  Jade reached a hand around and rubbed a sore spot on her lower back.

  “Are you in pain?” Tolen asked.

  “A bit. Feels like I bruised a muscle,” she nodded, biting her bottom lip. For the first time, she did not try to hide her vulnerability from Tolen.

  Tolen rose, went to the bureau, and returned to the bed with a plastic prescription bottle. He handed her an unmarked pill. “Here,” he said, placing the pill in her hand and handing her a glass of water from the nightstand. “It’s a mild muscle relaxer.”

  She swallowed it with a sip of water and returned the glass to the nightstand. She noticed the bandage on her arm had been changed and a fresh one applied. The wound was expertly dressed with a brown patch held in place with white medical tape.

  “I hope you don’t mind,” Tolen began, “but I changed your bandage.”

  For some reason, she felt her cheeks blush. “Um…where are we?”

  “In a hotel not far from Grikos Beach and the
Petra. Reba Zee made arrangements while we were exploring.”

  “How exactly did you know where to set the explosive to get us out?” she said, crossing a leg. The robe crept up to her thigh. She pulled it down slowly to cover her knee.

  “All along I thought there had to be another passage into the tunnels. Physics dictated that the Apostles’ stone coffins couldn’t have fit down the spiraling wormhole at the cistern. They had to have been placed inside via a different path.

  “When we retreated to the room at the end of the last arm of the tunnel, I found another image etched into the stone: two gold rings, like you discovered at the base of the cistern. I reasoned it was an alternative opening…or had been at one time. This meant that the wall had been resealed and was probably substantially thinner. As it turns out, the cave room was under water, abutting to the bay. After the charge detonated and created a hole in the wall, ocean water burst inside. Diaz and I got you out, but only after you were thrown into the stone wall and knocked unconscious. We pulled you to the surface and brought you back here. Amazingly, from outside, it appeared nothing unusual had happened to the Petra, and, in fact, it hadn’t. Everything had been below ground. There’s no evidence of the labyrinth or the fire, which was put out by the influx of seawater.” Tolen paused.

  Jade wanted to ask who had changed her out of her wet clothes and placed her in a robe, but she refrained. Then she considered a far greater implication: the Gold Scroll had been lost. The fabulous tombs of the Apostles were destroyed. “It’s all gone.”

  “It was an elaborate trap,” Tolen said, “but the tombs may still be intact. Remember, the branches were intentionally kept out of the rooms with the coffins. Now we know why.”

  Jade thought for a moment, considering the design of the underground structure. “The place was absolutely fascinating. Did you notice the pattern of the tunnels? At first we thought it was a cruciform, but the intersecting tunnel had passageways which curved and ran parallel to the far end of the main tunnel. It formed the shape of a trident.”

 

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