Death Mask

by Alex Archer

  The guard took a half step forward, craning his neck to look up, expecting to see a mountain goat grazing on the narrow ledge.

  Annja seized the moment.

  She dropped down, landing with a leg on each of his shoulders. His knees buckled under her. He staggered, reaching out with one hand to try to keep himself upright, but it was a losing battle. Annja had the better of him and they both knew it. She tucked her ankle behind the knee of her other leg and squeezed, clamping both hands over the man’s mouth as he kicked and struggled, flailing about. He dropped his gun, a machine pistol, and clawed at her hands, but there was no dislodging her grip. He couldn’t shake her off, and the more desperately he struggled, the more strength she put into her stranglehold. She tensed her thighs, choking him. The guard threw himself backward, slamming Annja against the stone wall. It was a desperate move. The impact knocked the air out of her for a second, but she clung on, her vicelike grip tightening relentlessly, until the fight began to leave him. The pressure on his vagus nerve took effect.

  The man crumpled, unconscious, and fell to the ground.

  He wasn’t going to be moving for a while.

  She checked his pulse. It was still strong.

  She picked up his Steyr machine pistol and felt the weight in her hand. She’d never felt particularly comfortable around guns. They weren’t her thing. But she didn’t want to leave it behind. There was no telling who might follow her into the dark. Yes, Roux was out there, but how many more of the Brotherhood of the Burning were working their way toward the cave? She didn’t want to risk arming them if she didn’t have to.

  Annja stepped deeper into the shadows, reaching out as the opening turned through ninety degrees and feeling around for a way in. She felt wood beneath her fingertips. She pulled out her flashlight and shone the beam on a door. There was a rust-pitted ring that served as a handle, but it didn’t matter if she twisted or turned it; it wasn’t budging. There was no sign of a lock, but there was obviously some kind of hidden mechanism securing the door. She recalled Zanetti’s instructions—face Mecca, turn back to face the door and say the name of the prophet three times. She didn’t see how it could work, but as she turned to face west, she realized that the ground beneath her feet was shifting. She played the light across her feet, revealing a circle of stone set into the rock floor.

  Annja smiled.

  She faced the door again and took hold of the handle before making the turn again.

  The circle of stone moved with her.

  “Muhammad...Muhammad...Muhammad,” she said, and this time when she turned the handle there was an audible click as the door was released.

  The prophet’s name was a timing device.

  She turned the flashlight into the space as she entered, lighting up the space beyond.

  She stepped inside. The door started closing behind her. Almost too late, she realized she had no idea how to get back out. Not only that, she hadn’t told Roux how to get in. Thinking fast, she dropped to her knees and wedged the door open with the only thing she had to hand—the fallen brother’s Steyr machine pistol. It couldn’t be helped. And if Roux was unarmed, it’d level things up once he entered the mountain.

  Happy she had an escape route, Annja took one final breath of fresh air and headed into the mountain.

  She hadn’t gone more than fifty feet before she saw the glow of a naked flame up ahead.

  33

  Roux tried not take his eyes off the point where Annja had disappeared, picking out enough features on the rock face to be sure he didn’t lose the spot as he made his way toward it. Even so, it was difficult. With every step he took, the shadows shifted, casting an entirely new facade to the stone wall. Without knowing the precise location of this portal into the mountain, it would be virtually impossible to find. It wasn’t the kind of thing a wandering tourist could just stumble upon. Then again, part of Roux really wanted to walk into that cave and find it had been picked clean. That kind of irony would serve Garin right. The look on his face would be as priceless as the treasure he’d lost.

  Total humiliation might be the one thing that saved Garin from the old man’s wrath.

  As he inched his way through the stones and boulders, Roux kept glancing up toward the faint scar in the mountainside, making sure that he could still distinguish it from the countless shadows conjured by the rising sun.

  In the last few strides, he slipped the machine pistol from his shoulder, ready to use it if he had to. He had no qualms about pulling the trigger. The guys he was facing were being paid well to make sure he didn’t interfere with their paymaster’s plans. They made themselves legitimate targets by taking Garin’s dime.

  But that dime wasn’t anywhere near enough compensation for going up against Annja Creed.

  Pity they didn’t know that before they cashed the checks.

  Roux approached what appeared, as he drew closer, to be a fold in the rock. In the shadows in the hollow, he almost stumbled over a body propped up awkwardly against the cold stone. Even in the limited light, he recognized the unconscious man as one of the brothers from the chapel inside the Alhambra.

  The man was alive, which made him luckier than he had any right to be. Had Roux been leading the charge, he wouldn’t have left a single enemy combatant alive behind him. But that was the old soldier ingrained in him. Annja wasn’t a soldier, and he had to admit he admired her no-nonsense approach. She hadn’t wasted a bullet, nor had she felt the need to call upon the sword. The tunnel beyond the door would likely be tight, and he could see the sword being cumbersome. She was resourceful. In this case, it was obvious she’d used her body as the weapon.

  Roux stepped over the fallen brother and slid through the doorway, which had been held open by a Steyr machine pistol just like the one in his hand. No doubt Garin had ordered a bulk shipment of arms, probably from some Russian dealer with an aversion to questions.

  Stepping into the darkness without the benefit of a flashlight, Roux moved slowly and stealthily, one hand trailing lightly across the rock wall to guide him. Even in the dark, the old man was light on his feet. It was impossible to tell in the dark just how sound or unsound the passage was, or what the integrity of the walls was like, especially since it likely hadn’t been visited for hundreds of years. He could feel the weight of the mountain above him, though. He hated being underground. It was akin to being buried alive. Who in their right mind wanted to spend more time than they had to out of the sun and the wide-open spaces? He moved forward, careful not to kick any scattered stones, placing each foot slowly so it didn’t crunch on the grit that had accumulated over all that time.

  Whoever had found—or made—this vault inside the mountain had chosen the site well.

  It was secure.

  Up ahead, Roux saw the glow of an orange flame.

  It grew brighter.

  Roux stayed tight to the wall, feeling his way along it another few paces, painfully aware that the tunnel was crushing in on all sides without needing to reach out and prove it to himself. He shuddered. The ground beneath his feet sloped slightly upward, no doubt to ensure drainage rather than risk flooding out the entire subterranean complex. That slight incline meant a lot of careful thought had gone into the engineering of this place, too. He shouldn’t have been surprised. The Moorish builders were among the world’s premier architects in their day. This narrow path wasn’t easy to walk, and deliberately so. The construction was intended to protect the treasure in the mountain’s heart.

  There was no way those Moorish architects would have left the protection of their greatest treasures to a door in a hidden fold of the rock, no matter how complicated it was to unlock.

  They would have taken other measures to protect their wealth.

  He was absolutely sure of it.

  And his conviction was proven right.

  The flickering f
lame cast shadows across the passage. Seeing what it was, Roux crept toward it: a torch burning in a sconce set into the wall.

  He almost walked into a spear that had been fired from a hidden mechanism set into the tunnel’s ceiling.

  By the light of the torch, he saw the trap had been sprung by a careless footfall pressing down on an uneven slab set into the floor. There was a dark smear on the spear tip. Blood. Meaning that whoever sprung it hadn’t come away unharmed. He hoped, grimly, that it stung more than just Garin’s pride.

  He peered into the darkness, feeling the heat of the flame against his face.

  He couldn’t hear anything ahead of him.

  He should have been able to hear something.

  The silence was almost more unnerving than the bloody spear tip.

  Coming, ready or not, he thought.

  34

  The beam from the flashlight picked out the spear before she stumbled into it.

  Annja had been moving carefully long before she reached that point, though, wary of where she put her feet. She’d been half expecting a similar trap since she stepped into the tunnel. One misstep was all it would take if there were any more weighted traps or pitfalls. Professor Zanetti’s warning had been crystal clear. He’d been spot-on with everything he’d deciphered thus far, so she had no reason to doubt what he’d said about the challenges between her and the waiting treasure. It only made sense to proceed with extreme caution. The sophistication of the door’s locking mechanism had suggested a level of craftsmanship that wasn’t necessarily easy to figure out, either. So why risk it?

  Yes, Garin and Maffrici had taken this path before her, but they could have been lucky and avoided any number of other traps. Not for the first time, she wondered how it was that Garin had first heard of this place. Had it been Maffrici who had come to him, knowing the secrets the Mask of Torquemada carried? Garin could have known the language inscribed on the mask, as he was born before it died out, but still, it was unlikely. So was it Maffrici? The curator was the variable in all of this. She just didn’t know enough about him. Was he Garin’s translator? Or was his role something else entirely?

  She looked at the tiny black spot in the ceiling where the spear had thrust down, and then at the bloody spear tip. It had clearly done some damage—but how much? And to whom?

  Someone had lit a torch and set it into a sconce on the wall, no doubt lighting the way for their return.

  She shone the beam of her flashlight along the floor. She didn’t expect there to be signs of another trap so close to this one, but she couldn’t afford to take any chances. All she found, though, was a trail of dark splashes that couldn’t have been anything other than blood.

  Less than thirty paces later, Annja caught sight of two men standing close to another blazing torch. They didn’t see her—or at least they acted as if they didn’t. She killed the flashlight. Even without being able to see their faces, she could tell that Garin wasn’t one of them. They didn’t seem to be particularly on edge. Hadn’t Garin warned them to expect visitors? Surely he would have if he’d set them as guards. Maybe he didn’t want them knowing what the stakes were in this search, in case they got ideas of their own.

  She needed to neutralize them quickly and quietly.

  Annja reached out, willing the sword into her grasp even as she closed her fingers into a fist around its hilt and drew it from the otherwhere.

  The tunnel was cramped, and the blade emitted an eerie glow that made her appear to be some fatal revenant coming charging out of the darkness. Still, it was subtler than the machine pistol.

  “Raul?” one of the two men called, mistaking her for the unconscious guard she’d left back in the doorway. She closed half of the gap in silence.

  It was already too late when the man realized his mistake. She stepped into the circle of light cast by the flame. No matter how desperately they struggled to raise their weapons, they did not stand a chance.

  Annja danced to one side and pulled the sword back behind her, wielding it like she would a golf club, its edge cutting through the air. The blade caught the first man below his belt buckle, biting through metal and leather. The sword cut clean through him, slicing deep into his flesh and through internal organs in a single stroke. The man’s expression betrayed his surprise. There was no pain or fear. He glanced down at the ruination of his flesh as he sank to his knees, clutching at his stomach as if he could stem the flow of blood with his fingers and force the contents of his body back inside the gaping wound as his life spilled out onto the floor.

  Annja heaved the sword away from him just as the second man leveled his machine pistol, finally grasping the threat she posed. He swung the muzzle toward her, point-blank. But before he could squeeze the trigger and riddle her flesh with steel, Annja pushed the barrel of the gun to one side, slamming it into the stone wall with dexterity and speed that defied thought or counter. His brain simply couldn’t think that fast. Annja fought on pure instinct. She thrust the sword deep into his chest, ramming it all the way in, until the tip of the blade emerged blood-slicked on the other side.

  Blood frothed from his mouth, his lips moving but not making a sound as he collapsed at her feet.

  They were both still alive when Annja stepped over them, but they wouldn’t be for long.

  The torch burned on.

  At least they would not die in darkness.

  35

  Only too aware of how close she might be to the men in front of her, Annja kept the flashlight pointed at the ground, with one hand over the beam. Ideally, she’d have done without it, but she needed to see where she was treading. The ground was uneven and any protruding edge could have been the trigger for an elaborate trap.

  She crept forward, listening for the slightest sound, anything to warn her that Garin and the curator had come to a stop or that they were coming back her way.

  The corridor bent ahead of her, the rock illuminated by another torch set in a sconce beyond the curve. She killed the flashlight for as far as the burning torch lit the way. As she reached the turn she paused, again straining to hear, before she risked peering out around the corner. Annja pressed herself tight to the wall. As the tunnel straightened out it widened, leading into a cavern. She could see the bright colors of the first few tiles of a floor decorated with a complicated Morisco mosaic. A genuine work of art filled the space.

  The sight was engrossing, and part of her wanted to rush forward and see exactly what it was, to revel in its simple existence after all these years. But in the center of the masterpiece, she saw Garin and Maffrici along with half a dozen heavily armed guards. One man sat propped up against a wall, his legs splayed out in front of him, to help keep him from toppling. He clutched at a dark patch in his side, his face white in the artificial light. The spear trap’s victim.

  The presence of the gunmen was almost enough to convince her that Garin had been brought to this place against his will. Almost. She recognized the avarice in his face. Yet Garin was part of what she did, of who she was. She couldn’t imagine it any other way. Garin was as much a part of her world as Roux was, and without him and his place in it, everything would be off-kilter.

  She desperately wanted to believe that Roux was wrong, that she was wrong.

  And she almost managed it.

  Garin held the mask, turning it over and over in his hands. He traced the inside of it with his fingers, feeling the silversmith’s craftsmanship. He handed it to Maffrici, who had a jeweler’s glass wedged to his eye. She’d guessed right; Maffrici was Garin’s translator. But instead of examining the smooth face or the inside of the mask, the curator tipped it on its side, moving the edge closer to his face as he shone a penlight along it.

  Annja hadn’t even considered the possibility that there could be more instructions engraved into the edge of the metal. She kicked herself for being sloppy.


  Maffrici knew more about what lay ahead of them than she did.

  But if he had known about the spear trap, why did he let one of their men walk into it? She shuddered as she remembered what Roux’s hacker had found, evidence that Garin had willingly sacrificed his bodyguards to sell the lie of his kidnapping. He had no regard for life, she realized. Or no regard for the lives of those around him. His own, he was incredibly fond of. Of course he had sent one of his guards ahead to trigger the trap. It was expedient. Set it off rather than spend time searching for it. A sprung trap couldn’t hurt anyone else.

  So what was on the mask’s edge?

  What other message could the silversmith have engraved?

  Maffrici looked up, a satisfied smile spreading slowly across his torch-lit face as he took in the ceiling. He returned his gaze to the mask and nodded, then pointed to something on the ceiling and drew Garin’s attention to the mask. They were partners. The man wasn’t giving Garin instructions; he was seeking his approval. Annja strained, trying to make out the words that passed between them. Voices echoed around the chamber, but the strange acoustics made it impossible for her to understand what was being said. It was obvious from their body language that Garin was the one giving orders.

  He counted the tiles, his gait awkward. She realized that he was stepping over certain tiles in the mosaic. No doubt they were part of the traps Zanetti had identified. Garin appeared to have a good idea of where it was and, more importantly, what was likely to trigger it. All she could do was watch and wait. Without knowing what was written on the edge of the mask, she was in the dark, both literally and metaphorically.

  Two of his men tied a length of rope around the legs of the man who had been gored by the spear trap.

  Annja had only taken her eyes off the injured man a minute or two. In that time, everything about him had changed. The hand that had clutched at his wound had slipped away and lay limp in his lap. His head leaned to one side. He’d lost the fight. Garin rattled off a string of instructions, pointing at the spaces where it was safe to walk, shouting warnings when one of his men veered off the path.